\y
ROMANCES
OF THE
PEERAGE
To
CHARLES RIDGE SIMPSON ESQRE
With the Author's Sincere Regards
BARBARA VILLIERS
COUNTESS OF CASTLEMAINE
AND
DUCHESS OF CLEVELAND
ROMANCES OF
THE PEERAGE
BY
THORNTON HALL, F.S.A.
Author of
Love Affairs of the Courts of Europe" etc., etc.
With 1 6 Illustrations
LONDON: HOLDEN & HARDINGHAM
ADELPHI .... 1914
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I A BEAUTIFUL TERMAGANT - I
II FIGHTING FITZGERALD - 12
III THE " HANDSOME SCOTS " - -23
IV THE WOOING OF A WIDOW - 33
V THE CRIME OF A COUNTESS - 43
VI THE ROMANCE OF THE SEA-CHILD - 53
VII A QUEEN OF THE DESERT - - 63
VIII THE POET AND THE COUNTESS - 74
IX A RIGHT HONOURABLE JACK TAR - 84
X A BELLE OF THE RESTORATION - 94
XI AN INFAMOUS BROTHERHOOD - 104
XII THE DUCHESS IN THE WHITE MASK - - 1 13
XIII A BEAUTIFUL SHREW - - 124
XIV A NOBLE ECCENTRIC 135
XV THE WOMAN WHO MADE AN EMPEROR - 146
2056552
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
XVI A ROMANTIC WOOING - - 156
XVII THE MAD KNIGHT OF MALTA - - 1 66
XVIII A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SYREN - - 176
XIX PEASANT OR COUNTESS - 1 86
XX THE EARL AND THE BUTCHER'S DAUGHTER 196
XXI TWO MADCAP MAIDS OF HONOUR - 2O6
XXII A NOBLE DEGENERATE - - 215
XXIII THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF AN EARL - 225
XXIV THE MISER WHO REFUSED A CORONET - 236
XXV THE THREE GRACES - - 246
XXVI THE IDOL OF A HERO - - 256
XXVII A MAID OF MYSTERY - - 266
XXVIII AN UNCROWNED QUEEN 277
XXIX A METEOR OF THE TURF - 287
XXX AT THE SIGN OF THE " RED SHIELD " - - 2Q7
XXXI AN EARLDOM THAT WENT A-BEGGING - 306
XXXII A TRAGEDY OF THE ALTAR 315
XXXIII THE BEAUTIFUL SHERIDANS - - 324
XXXIV THE COMTESSE DE GRAMONT - 334
XXXV A DUCAL ROUE ----- 344
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
BARBARA VIEWERS - Frontispiece
Facing Page
PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART - 22
THE COUNTESS OF ESSEX - - - 42
THE LADY ELLENBOROUGH - 62
THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI - - 74
MEDMENHAM ABBEY, BUCKS - 104
FRANCES JENNINGS - 113
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU - 124
THE HONBLE. MARY BELLENDEN - 2O6
MARIA, COUNTESS OF WALDEGRAVE - - 246
LAURA VISCOUNTESS CHEWTON, LADY MARIA
WALDEGRAVE, LADY HORATIA WALDEGRAVE - 252
LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD - - 266
MRS. FITZHERBERT - 276
LORD GEORGE BENTINCK - 286
THE HONBLE MRS. NORTON - 324
LA BELLE HAMILTON - 334
vii
ROMANCES OF THE
PEERAGE
CHAPTER I
A BEAUTIFUL TERMAGANT
IN the galaxy of fair women who in turn enslaved the
Merry Monarch's heart, Barbara Villiers shines
splendid and supreme. Others had their day of
triumph, when for a time her supremacy seemed in
danger; but, from Hortense Mancini, the most.
radiantly beautiful of Mazarin's quintette of lovely
nieces, to bewitching Nell Gwynne, the " orange
wench " of Drury Lane, Barbara Villiers saw all her
rivals relinquish their sceptres, while she, who was the
first to receive Charles's caresses on the day of his
restoration, remained to his last conscious hour his
uncrowned Queen.
One looks in vain for the secret of her queendom
over this most fickle of Royal lovers. She was
beautiful, it is true, with a bold, dark beauty and the
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
voluptuous physique before which Charles was ever
weak; but in loveliness of face and figure she was
eclipsed by most of her rivals, notably by La Belle
Stuart and Nell Gwynne. And against her physical
charms were arrayed " the temper of a fiend and the
manners of a fish-wife," which might well have given
short shrift to a woman more lovely and less clever.
That there was a very vicious strain in Barbara
Villiers' blood her stoutest champion could no more
deny than he could put a finger on the source from
which she derived it. Her father was William,
second Viscount Grandison, who, when she was an
infant, fell fighting valiantly for his King at Edgehill,
and to whose virtues Clarendon paid such a glowing
tribute; and if she was great-niece of that splendid
profligate, the first Duke of Buckingham, all her direct
Villiers ancestors had been men of clean lives and good
repute from the days when Sir Richard carried his
sword with the first Edward into the Holy Land.
Cradled towards the end of the year 1640, Barbara
was brought up in the country under the, perhaps
careless, eye of her mother, who had found a second
husband in Charles, Earl of Anglesey; and at sixteen
brought her ripening charms of blue eyes, luxuriant
black hair, and beautiful, though still immature,
figure to London, where she seems to have lost no time
in exhibiting the character which in some mysterious
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
way must have been developing in the seeming inno-
cence of rustic life. Before she had been many
months in London the young beauty, still but a school-
girl, was shocking her relatives by an intrigue with
that handsome fop, the second Earl of Chesterfield,
with whom she was daily making assignations at
coffee-houses or mercers' shops in the City.
But so inconstant was she even at this early age that,
while openly in love with the rakish Earl, who had
already worn widower's weeds, to the amazement of
everybody she actually gave her hand, in spite of the
strong opposition of her family, to Roger Palmer, a
law student of comparatively obscure family, without
in any degree interrupting her relations with the noble-
man whom Swift described as " the greatest knave in
England."
Thus before she had seen her nineteenth birthday
we find Barbara, daughter of the proud house of
Villiers, wearing a wedding-ring as wife of a poor
student of the law, while engaged in an open liaison
with a notorious rake, which was only concluded when
the Earl, having killed his man in a duel, was com-
pelled to take leave of both her and his country.
For a time she seems to have led an uneventful
and respectable life with her weak-kneed husband, who
was the veriest slave to his beautiful wife, until a much
more .formidable rival than the runaway Earl came
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
to disturb the domestic dovecot, in the form of the
restored Stuart King, Charles II. When and where
Barbara Palmer first met the man in whose life she was
to play such a conspicuous part is not known. It may
have been during his days of exile in Holland, where
she had spent some time with her husband. We do
know, however, that Charles, on the first proud day of
his return to the throne of his fathers, lost not a
moment in flying to her arms, with the thunders of
acclaim still in his ears. He valued more a smile of
welcome from Roger Palmer's wife than all the
frenzied plaudits of his subjects and the fulsome
oratory of the Speaker of the Commons.
On the days that followed, Pepys, who was next-
door neighbour to the Palmers in King-street, West-
minster, throws significant light when he tells us of
the " great doings of music he heard; the King and
Dukes at Mme. Palmer's, a pretty woman they have
a fancy to . " And through all this time Roger Palmer,
now blossomed into a Member of Parliament for
Windsor, looked on with weak smiles while his wife
was wooed by a King and received the homage and
questionable flatteries of his merry courtiers.
With what fatal swiftness this syren enveloped her
Royal lover in the toils of her beauty we know. Before
he had been many months on his throne she had
persuaded him to give her a coronet by ennobling her
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
nondescript husband; and as Baroness of Limerick and
Countess of Castlemaine she plumed her feathers for
further conquest. When Charles led Catherine of
Braganza to the altar it seemed for a time that her
day of triumph was over; but her ladyship knew better.
She made this seeming calamity a stepping-stone to a
more assured position. Nothing would satisfy her but
that she should be appointed Lady of the Bedchamber
to the new Queen, and thus be in a position to carry
her " warfare " into the enemy's camp.
Catherine was furious at the suggestion of such an
indignity. She wept and pleaded and stormed; she
vowed she would never admit " that woman " into
her presence, and enlisted Clarendon himself as
champion of her outraged honour. But Charles was
inexorable alike to his wife's tears and his Chancellor's
dignified protests. To the latter he declared,
" Nobody shall presume to meddle in the affairs of
the Countess of Castlemaine. Whoever dares to do
so will have cause to repent it to the last moment of his
life. " And within a few days the brazen Countess was
presented by the King at the Drawing Room of his
Queen, who, at sight of her, " fainted, breaking a
blood-vessel."
Assured beforehand of this new victory the Countess
had picked a quarrel with that amiable nonentity her
husband, and, in well-affected rage, had left him for
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
ever, taking with her " the plate, jewels and other
best things, every dish and cloth and servant; except
the porter "; and was thus free to climb untrammelled
the dizzy ladder of ambition on which she had now
secured so firm a footing. As for the abandoned Earl,
he retired for a time to hide his shame and grief in a
French monastery.
Thus installed in a position of honour and intimacy
in the King's palace, my Lady Castlemaine had
abundant opportunities of enmeshing the King still
more in her toils; and in this she succeeded until he
became the veriest slave to her every caprice. And
no lover, Royal or plebeian, ever had such an exacting,
autocratic mistress. She lashed him mercilessly with
her tongue; she would fly into rages before which he
cowered; she revelled in making him an object of
ridicule to his courtiers; but, so profound was his
infatuation for his beautiful Xantippe, that the worse
she treated him the more strongly his fetters were
forged.
Much as she loved power and place, she prized
money more; and money she was determined to have,
to squander on pleasure or to feed the greed of her
many other lovers. The Customs were made to
replenish her purse at the rate of 10,000 a year; from
the tax on beer she drew a similar revenue, and the
Post Office was made to contribute 5,000 annually;
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
while from the Irish Treasury she drew copious
streams of gold. She trafficked openly in offices and
dignities, and was as ready to pocket a few hundreds
for a captaincy in the Army as to receive thousands of
pounds for a seat on the Judicial Bench or the lawn
sleeves of a Bishop. And, not content with bleeding
the country to the extent of at least 100,000 a year,
it is said that whenever she went shopping she charged
the Privy Purse with the cost of her purchases.
From Charles himself she was constantly extorting
or cajoling large sums or costly presents. Pepys, for
instance, tells us that " my Lady Castlemaine hath
all the King's Christmas presents, made him by the
Peers, given to her "; and that " at the great ball she
was much richer in jewels than the Queen and Duchess
(of York) put together." One day, at a play, her
jewels were valued at 40,000, an enormous sum in
those days. And at one time, we learn, she had
stripped her Royal lover of everything, " so that he
himself lacked linen and the very servants at Whitehall
had not bread to eat."
And fast as the ill-gotten gold poured into her
coffers it flowed out in channels of reckless extrava-
gance. Enormous sums, we know, found their way
into other pockets over the card-table; she rarely
staked less than i ,500 on a cast; and at a single sitting
she .once lost 25,000. Large sums were also
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
squandered on her favourites, who succeeded one
another in bewildering succession; in fact, in the
number and variety of her lovers this Queen of
a King's harem was no mean rival to Catherine the
Great, the most notorious libertine in history.
Now it is Henry Jermyn, the biggest fop and rake
of the day, with his large head, small legs, and absurd
affectations, with whom she dallies ; and now it is Jacob
Hall, the rope-dancer, " a compound of Hercules and
Adonis," on whom she bestows a large pension drawn
from the National Defence Fund. Young John
Churchill, the handsomest page at Charles' Court, was
drawn into her web; and when he was compelled to
make his escape through her boudoir window just as
the King opened the door, and was sent packing off
to the wars to cool his ardour, my lady, as she kissed
him good-bye, slipped 5,0x30 into the hand of her
" dear boy."
To Churchill succeeded that prince of profligates
and dandies, the second Duke of Buckingham, who
for a time shared her smiles with King Charles; then
it was Wycherley who caught her volatile fancy with
his handsome face and clever tongue; only to give
place in turn to some other favourite, such as the actor
Hart, Shakespeare's grand-nephew, of whom Pepys
tells us, " My Lady Castlemaine is mightily in love
with Hart; and he is much with her in private, and she
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
goes to him, and do give him many presents; and that
the thing is most certain, and by this means she is even
with the King's love to Mrs. Davis.*'
Thus squandering her gold in every form of dis-
sipation and wild extravagance, and lavishing her
smiles on a panorama of lovers from Dukes to mounte
banks and actors, my lady had for many years a right
royal time as maitresse en litre to her indulgent Royal
lover, whose loyalty was unshaken alike by her
tempers and her infidelities.
That there were many scenes between the lovers
was inevitable; but from all my lady emerged
triumphant, thanks to her scathing tongue and her
domineering temper. On one occasion, after wither-
ing Charles with the sirocco of her abuse, she packed
up her trunks and left the palace for Richmond, swear-
ing she would never return. Within a couple of days
Charles was at Richmond imploring his Countess on
his knees to forgive and forget; and the following day
she was installed at Whitehall more secure in favour
than ever. And this is but one of many similar
occasions on which she brought her Royal lover to his
knees.
For a time, it is true, her star was paled by rival
luminaries which floated into the Court firmament; but
her eclipse was quickly over, and she emerged from it
more- splendid than before. And it was only when
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Louise de Querouaille, that Queen of intrigantes, got
Charles within her toils that her supremacy was really
in danger. By this time she had blossomed into the
Countess of Southampton and Duchess of Cleveland,
and had been dowered with lands and revenues more
than adequate, apart from her plunder, to keep up such
high dignities; and so successfully did she continue
to play her cards to the end that, on that memorable
Sunday night, a few days before Charles's death, she
was, it is said, the most brilliant figure at his final
festival of gambling and song in the palace of White-
hall.
The rest of her strange story must be told in few
words. With her Royal lover's death the Duchess's
sun of splendour had set; but her passions lost none
of their fires. She lived through James II.'s reign in
luxury and extravagance, and kept up her intrigues.
At sixty-six she was led to the altar by " Handsome
Fielding," an insufferable fop and rake whom Swift
pilloried as " one of the meanest figures in history "
a man, moreover, young enough to be her son; and
with him she led a terrible life. He plundered her,
beat her, and when she could not, or would not, give
him all the money he demanded, he would " draw his
sword and threaten to kill her, swearing it was no more
sin to kill her than a dog."
When at last this horrible nightmare ended in a
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
divorce, after her husband's conviction on a charge of
bigamy, the Duchess retired to her Chiswick house to
spend her last years in peace and retirement; and there,
lonely and unfriended, she closed her days miserably
one October day in 1709, leaving practically nothing
behind her of her ill-gotten gold, but leaving the
memory of life's best gifts squandered in a shameless
life. To Charles she had borne three daughters and
four sons, three of whom lived to wear ducal coronets.
CHAPTER II
FIGHTING FITZGERALD
A MAN in whose veins mingled the turbulent blood of
the Geraldines and the wild, eccentric strain of the
Herveys (of whom Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
said, " God made men, women, and the Herveys ")
could scarcely be expected to play a normal or prosaic
part on the stage of life ; and certainly George Robert
Fitzgerald proved a worthy scion of the houses of
Leinster and Bristol.
His father, George Fitzgerald, was a dissolute Irish
squire, who lived on the Mayo lands which his fore-
fathers had held since Cromwell's day, and squan-
dered his patrimony of ,3,000 a year in ways which
shocked his more sober-going neighbours. His
mother, the Lady Mary, daughter of the Earl of
Bristol, who had left the Royal Court where she was
maid-of-honour to the Princess Amelia, to wear the
orange-blossom for the Irish squire, had much of the
beauty and character of the Hervey women, and more
than her share of their eccentricities.
It was an ill-assorted, impossible union, which could
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
only end in disaster ; and before Lady Mary had been
many years a wife she left her profligate husband, tak-
ing with her their elder son, George, and leaving
behind a menage consisting of the squire, a Miss
Norris, who had taken her place in her hus-
band's volatile affections, and a younger son, Charles
Lionel.
The elder boy, George, after a few years at Eton,
where he was the ringleader in every escapade, passed
into the Army, where, before many months had
passed, he began the career of turbulence and lawless-
ness which won for him the designation of " Fighting
Fitzgerald." His first adventure was characteristic
of the youth. One day, tempted by the red lips of a
pretty milliner's assistant, he vaulted over the counter
to snatch a kiss from them, and, a few hours later,
found himself challenged to a duel by a neighbouring
shopkeeper, the girl's lover. The duellists repaired
to an obscure public-house, and locked themselves in
a room for a fight to the death ; and death would prob-
ably have been the issue had the duel not been inter-
rupted before the fight had well begun.
Our hero was naturally disgusted at such a tame
finish to his first affaire; but he had not long to wait
for a second and more serious occasion to prove his
mettle. One of his fellow-subalterns, whom he had
driven to desperation by his bullying and teasing,
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
summoned up courage to challenge the tyrant. A
meeting took place at five o'clock in the morning, and
at the second exchange of shots, Fitzgerald received
the ball in his forehead, and was only saved from an
early grave by the operation of trepanning. It is said
that his father was so disgusted at this happy issue
for his son that, when a relative ventured to congratu-
late him, he made an attempt, which narrowly escaped
success, to run the sympathiser through the body with
his sword.
But, in spite of his braggadocio, our hero seems to
have been a bit of a coward, as was proved on one
occasion when he repeatedly interrupted the conver-
sation of a Mr. Dillon. Mr. Dillon bore the boy's
rudeness with exemplary patience for a time; then,
producing his watch, he said quietly, " I lay down
my watch on the table, and if you attempt to say a
word for one hour I will make it a personal matter
with you. You understand me, young sir?" The
" young sir " did understand, and for sixty minutes
he never once opened his mouth.
While still in his teens, Fitzgerald carried his
prowess and his indiscretions to Dublin, where he
proved as adventurous in the lists of love as on the
duelling-ground. He succumbed to the charms of a
pretty heiress, a Miss Conolly; and when her family
ventured to oppose the union, he promptly ran away
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
with her, made her his wife, and escaped for his
honeymoon to France. Here the " fine, fighting,
frolicsome " Irishman cut for a time a conspicuous
figure at the Court of Louis XVI., until he was kicked
out of it as the result of shady conduct at the gaming-
table.
A few days later, however, the irrepressible youth
turned up at the Royal Stag Hunt at Fontainebleau,
and proved his daring by leaping after the stag over a
wall into the Seine, and bringing it to bay on the oppo-
site bank. Nor was he long before his lust for duel-
ling asserted itself. He found a suitable victim in a
Major Baggs, whom he disabled at the first shot.
Not content, however, with having put his man hors
de combat, Fitzgerald horrified his seconds and on-
lookers by threateningly walking up to the fallen Major.
" Sir, I am wounded," faintly exclaimed Baggs.
" But you are not dead," retorted Fitzgerald, as he
put another bullet into his helpless adversary.
After such an exhibition of cowardice and treachery,
Fitzgerald was glad to escape to London, where his
dissolute life, his reckless gambling, and his insuffer-
able " swagger " won for him an unenviable notoriety ;
and where he quickly found an opportunity of practis-
ing once more his questionable art of the duello. When
a down-at-heels habitue of the turf known as " Daisy
Walker" refused to pay him ,2,500, which he cer-
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
tainly did not owe, Fitzgerald promptly sent his
second, and a duel was arranged. At the first ex-
change of shots Walker was wounded ; the Irishman,
before firing, offering to wager a thousand guineas
that he could kill his man. Luckily for him the bet
was not taken; for although seriously hurt, Walker
survived many a year.
In spite of his passion for fighting, Fitzgerald seems
to have been anything but bloodthirsty in appearance.
He is described, at this time, as " a polished and
elegant gentleman; his person was very slight and
juvenile, and his countenance extremely mild and in-
sinuating in marked contrast to the savage treachery
of his actions." That he was dandy as well as swash-
buckler, we know ; for when his house in County Mayo
was looted by a Castlebar mob, among the personal
spoil were " a set of diamond vest-buttons, a diamond
loop and button for a hat, and a hat-band ornamented
with five or six rows of pearls."
Fitzgerald seems at last to have had a surfeit of the
duello ; for in 1778 we find him fired by a new ambition
none other than to win a seat in Parliament; and
into this ambition he threw himself enthusiastically.
His candidature opened magnificently, dramatically.
" A string of cars from the city of Dublin, of an amaz-
ing length, preceded the company several days, loaded
with the choicest articles the metropolis could furnish
16
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
necessary for the occasion. To them succeeded, in
proper order, cooks and confectioners of different
nations, sexes and colours; sempstresses, tailors,
mantua-makers, milliners, perfumers, hairdressers,
musicians, fireworkers, players, shoeblacks, and five
times the number of beggars."
For three riotous days Castlebar kept high holiday,
deluged with seas of liquor and enlivened by scores
of free fights. And through the turbulent, riotous,
shillelagh-flourishing crowds, our hero made his
triumphal progress in a gorgeous carriage, hemmed in
by sealed bags of golden guineas and " covered with
a profusion of jewels." But the candidate had made
himself too obnoxious in a score of ways to the Mayo
electors to win their suffrages. They would drink to
his success until the world reeled, and they would
pocket his guineas; but they refused to send him to
Westminster.
He had little time, however, for disappointment.
His father and brother were busy plotting to cheat
him of his inheritance; and at this juncture his wife,
to whom he seems, strange as it may appear, to have
been devoted, died, to his great grief. His troubles
seem to have turned his brain, if it was not already
unbalanced. He became moody and eccentric to an
alarming degree. He spent his nights in hunting, or
racing -madly over the country to the risk of his neck
17
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and the consternation of his neighbours. He became
so savage that none dared approach him. He was,
for a time at least, undoubtedly mad.
By a series of brutal and unprovoked injuries he
forced his neighbour, Lord Altamont, into a duel ; and
before his lordship had time to draw his sword Fitz-
gerald fired his pistol point-blank at his head. In a
later duel with a man named ffrench he only saved
his life by grovelling on the ground, where his
opponent left him in disgust.
With his father and brother he was constantly at
feud. He drove them from Rockfield House, gar-
risoned it, and defied them to regain possession ; and
when he was arrested for rioting he made a daring
escape through the roof of his prison. He next way-
laid his father on a journey to Dublin, carried him off
to Turlough, and kept him prisoner. It is said even
that he " had him chained to a block of wood and had
three of his teeth knocked out."
Again he was arrested; and this time he was
sentenced to three years' imprisonment and a fine of
,1,000, only to make another daring escape from his
prison, to throw himself on horseback, and race back
to Turlough and his captive father. The whole
country was now in arms against the outlawed " mad-
man." A small army of soldiers was summoned from
Dublin a thousand volunteers swelling their ranks.
18
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Fitzgerald was hemmed in by an army of resolute
men, all determined to capture him dead or alive.
But again he proved more than a match for the enemy.
In the dead of night he made his way through the
ring of armed men, carrying his father with him. He
crossed over into Sligo, and, taking a boat, fared out in
the open sea, where at last he compelled his father to
come to terms. A few days later he was arrested
"while walking in a careless and indifferent manner
in College Green."
After some months of durance, he received a free
pardon it is said through the Hervey influence ; and
once more he returned undaunted to the fray with his
father and brother, who, he was convinced, were in a
conspiracy to defraud him of his rights of heirship.
A few months later, Ireland was horrified by the news
that Patrick McDonnell, the legal champion of the
opposition faction, and one of his colleagues named
Hipson, had been brutally murdered at Fitzgerald's
instigation.
This crowning outrage roused the country to the
highest pitch of resentment and indignation. Tur-
lough House was besieged by a clamorous and excited
mob, supported by a troop of horse and some volun-
teers, and Fitzgerald was " run to earth," concealed
amid a heap of blankets in a chest, and lodged in
Castlebar Gaol. So strong and fierce was the feeling
19
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
against the " cowardly assassin " that, shortly before
his trial, his cell was broken into by a number of men
armed with swords and pistols; and, although the
prisoner fought desperately, he was left for dead. At
the trial he was carried into Court on his bed, almost
lifeless from the forty-six wounds that had been in-
flicted on him by his would-be murderers.
The trial was as brief as it was dramatic. So dense
was the crowd of spectators that " they were sitting
on each other's shoulders." Just before proceedings
opened, a cry that the floor was giving way caused
such alarm that judge and jury, counsellors and
spectators, stampeded and made a mad rush for the
door, in which many persons were seriously injured.
To the charge against Fitzgerald, of " provoking,
stirring up, and procuring certain persons to kill
Patrick Randell McDonnell and James Hipson," the
jury, after seven minutes' deliberation, returned a ver-
dict of " Guilty," and sentence of death was passed
and ordered to be carried out that same day. Thus
swift and summary was the vengeance that had at
last overtaken our hero or, perhaps we should say,
our " villain."
As the clock was striking six the same evening, the
doomed man, arrayed in an old hunting uniform, with
dirty shoes and stockings on his feet, and a hat tied
with a hempen cord, was solemnly conducted to the
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
place of execution. Mounting the scaffold, he gazed
for a moment, with indifferent eyes and a contemptu-
ous curl of the lips, at the sea of faces beneath him,
then, shaking hands with the Sheriff and executioner,
he prepared himself for the last act of all, adjusted
the rope round his own neck, and, after a brief prayer,
suddenly flung himself off.
To the consternation of all, the rope snapped, and
Fitzgerald fell, a huddled heap, to the ground. Rais-
ing himself, he exclaimed. " Is it possible the grand
jury of Mayo will not afford me a sufficiently strong
rope?" "Never fear," answered the High Sheriff,
"you shall have one strong enough, and speedily!"
Then, turning to the hangman, he added, " Do you
hear ? No more botching ! "
When a new rope was forthcoming, Fitzgerald's
courage seemed to have deserted him. He begged
more time for prayer. Then, after a few minutes
thus spent, he mounted the ladder again with halting
steps. The rope now proved too long. After a
further delay, it was shortened, and, with a final appeal
to the Supreme Judge, before Whom he was so soon
to appear, Fitzgerald was launched into eternity.
Thus ignobly perished, at the age of thirty-eight,
George Robert Fitzgerald, swashbuckler, duellist and
murderer, while the High Sheriff, who watched his
21
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
dying struggles, carried in his pocket the reprieve
which would have given him a new lease of his mis-
spent life.
22
PRINCE CHARLES EDWARD STUART
CHAPTER III
THE " HANDSOME SCOTS "
WHO was John Sobieski Stuart, Earl of Albany, who
died obscurely in Pimlico one February day in 1872;
and who, as he lay stretched in death, bore so strange
and striking a resemblance to Vandyke's presentment
of Charles II? Was he, as he claimed to be, a lineal
descendant of the Merry Monarch, and rightful heir
to his regal honours; or was he, as so many believed
and still assert, an impostor?
That the Earl was at least honest in this belief in
his Royal descent and rights, the late Mr. W. P.
Frith, R.A., stoutly maintained to his last day ; and
there were thousands across the Scottish Border who
would have been ready to lay down their lives for him
had he chosen to maintain his title at the point of the
sword.
Frith had first made the acquaintance of the Royal
Pretender under dramatic circumstances. He was in
the London studio of a Scottish artist when a knock
came to the door, and the maid announced " The
Princes." A moment later there walked into the
studio two tall, strikingly handsome men of dis-
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
tinguished appearance, at sight of whom the artist and
his wife dropped on their knees, and in turn kissed
the extended hands of the strangers with more than
the reverent homage usually accorded to Royalty.
When the Princes had withdrawn, his Scottish
friend revealed to Frith the identity of his exalted visi-
tors. They were, he said, none other than the grand-
sons of " Bonnie Prince Charlie," whose pretensions
to the throne of England had come to such a tragic
and complete eclipse at Culloden in 1745; and they
were now living in comparative obscurity and poverty
in Pimlico. " Such," said Mr. Frith, " was the start-
ling revelation made by my friend, the Scottish artist.
And, indeed, I could well imagine it true; for of the
two strangers the elder was the exact facsimile of
Charles II., while the younger might have been the
Bonnie Prince come to life again, so strong was the
resemblance."
In order to judge fairly the claim made by these
Princes of Pimlico, it is necessary to tell their story
from its beginning a story more full of romance and
mystery than almost any other in this series of
sketches ; and on which the curtain rises some seventy
years before this singular experience in a London
studio.
One day about the year 1774, a young Scottish
doctor called Cameron, who was touring in Italy, was
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
strolling in the grounds of the Convent of St. Rosalie,
between Parma and Florence, when he saw, rapidly
approaching along the road beneath him, a carriage
drawn by four horses, with postillions in scarlet
liveries. As the gorgeous equipage, with its steaming
horses, dashed past, the doctor caught a glimpse of its
occupants a handsome man of distinguished appear-
ance, with a pale-faced young lady by his side. Brief
as the glimpse was, it was sufficient; there could be
no mistaking the face of the man, which had been
familiar to him from early boyhood in many a por-
trait. It was that of Prince Charlie, the hero and
victim of Culloden; and the pale-faced lady by his
side was probably his girl-wife, Louisa, Princess of
Stolberg and Countess of Albany, whom the blase,
but still handsome, Prince had married a couple of
years earlier.
Within an hour, and almost before he had recovered
from his sensational discovery, an officer in uniform
ran breathlessly up to the young doctor, and, saluting
him, said, " I believe you are Doctor Cameron ? Your
presence here is most opportune. May I beg you to
accompany me at once to a lady who is in sore need
of your services? You will be well rewarded; but I
regret that it is necessary that you should accompany
me blindfolded."
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
At first the doctor indignantly declined an invitation
couched in such terms; but finally, partly moved by
the officer's earnest pleading and partly by curiosity
and a sense of honour, he consented; and, suffering
his eyes to be bandaged, was quickly whirled away in
a waiting carriage to his destination.
When the bandage was removed, the doctor found
himself in a large drawing-room luxuriously furnished
in crimson velvet, with its walls lined with mirrors,
where he was left by his mysterious guide. A few
moments later the door opened to admit the officer
who, his face now wreathed in smiles, said, " I am
delighted to inform you that the danger we anticipated
is now over. During my absence the lady has safely
given birth to a child, and your services will probably
not be required. But, before you go, perhaps you
will be good enough to see her and the child
to satisfy yourself that there is no longer any
danger."
Dr. Cameron, assenting, followed the officer through
long corridors, and was ushered into the patient's bed-
room a large chamber faintly illuminated by a soli-
tary wax candle in which he saw a woman holding
an infant wrapped in a mantle, and behind the cur-
tains of a stately bed the pale, white face of the girl-
mother. A few minutes served to satisfy the doctor
that all was well; and, again blindfolded, he was
26
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
swiftly conveyed back to St. Rosalie with a substantial
fee in his pocket.
Nor was this the end of Dr. Cameron's strange
adventures. One evening, a few days later, he was
strolling along the seashore when he saw a frigate
lying at anchor little more than a stone's throw away.
A boat was lowered and rowed ashore, and at the same
moment he heard a carriage approaching. " The car-
riage," to quote the doctor's own words, " was accom-
panied by a man on horseback, a man whom I recog-
nised as he who had conducted me a few days earlier
to the bedside of my lady patient. The carriage
stopped, and from it there descended a lady bearing
an infant in her arms. She entered the boat and was
rapidly rowed to the vessel, while the horseman re-
mained looking after her. Then the carriage drove
off, with him riding beside it."
The infant who had so dramatically made its
appearance in the world had evidently been smuggled
away in what appeared to be a British war-vessel ; and
this child he shrewdly suspected was the son of Prince
Charlie and his Countess wife, and the next Stuart
Pretender to the throne of England.
Many years later Mr. Macdonnell, a Highland
gentleman, to whom Dr. Cameron had told the story
27
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
on his deathbed, made the acquaintance of the child
of mystery, long grown to handsome manhood. He
was, Mr. Macdonnell says, " a strikingly handsome
man, with eyes such as never were in the head of man
or bird, save the eagle and Prince Charlie." He
wore the Stuart tartan, and was addressed by his
French valet as " Altesse Royale " and " Monseig-
neur " ; and made no concealment of the fact that he
was that son of Charles Stuart and the Countess of
Albany who, a few days after his birth in Italy, had
been brought to England by Admiral Hay in a war-
ship.
Here was strong confirmation of the strange story
which the dying doctor had confided to Mr. Mac-
donnell. But why, if the story were true, should the
Stuart Prince wish to conceal the existence of his son
in such a mysterious way? To this question the
answer was prompt. The Prince wished to place his
child in safety until he attained his majority; he was
convinced that, if his existence were known, an
attempt would be made on his life. And it was the
Prince's strong desire that his heir should be brought
up, not only unknown as a Stuart, but ignorant of his
own birth.
This explanation was sufficiently plausible to satisfy
Mr. Macdonnell that " Son Altesse Royale " was in
fact the new hope of the Stuarts the child whose
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
coming had been surrounded by so much romance and
mystery. He learnt, too, with interest that Charles
Stuart's son was himself the father of two boys, John
Sobieski Stuart and Charles Edward Stuart, who were
being brought up in Scotland, pledged by their father
never to reveal their Royal origin during his lifetime.
*****#**
The next scene in this romantic drama is staged by
the Viscount D'Arlingcourt who, while visiting Scot-
land, heard much of these princely grandsons of the
" Young Pretender." He was the guest of Colonel
Hugh Bailie, at Red Castle, and, curiously enough,
actually occupied the very bedchamber in which the
Bonnie Prince had slept a few nights before the
tragedy of Culloden ; and from his host he learnt with
astonishment that the Prince's grandsons were actu-
ally living at a place called Eilan Aigas, but a short
distance away.
" They are the two handsomest men," the Colonel
said, " in this part of the country. Nature has loaded
them with her favours. They have education, wit,
talents; and would indeed have been worthy of a
throne." Naturally the Viscount's curiosity was
aroused; and he thankfully accepted Lady Lovat's
offer to conduct him to the home of the Princes of
mystery.
He found it a mediaeval building, with ancient
29
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
windows and painted glass, shaded by centuries-old
firs and oaks; the escutcheon of Charles Edward was
over the door, with the inscription, " The Lord gave,
and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name
of the Lord." The two Princes unfortunately were
absent; but the wife of the younger (the only one
married) was there to welcome the Viscount and to
conduct him over the house.
The large hall he found hung around with flags.
The walls were covered with trophies; and the light
streamed through painted glass windows on statues
and banners in the most fantastic manner. " There
were collected together all the memorials of Charles
Edward his arms, his banner, his garments, his por-
trait. I admired his fine and noble countenance,
which I then beheld for the first time. A picture
painted by John Sobieski (the elder of the Prince's
grandsons) struck me very much. Its subject was the
' Battle of Culloden.' "
" No imagination could remain calm under the roof
of the brothers Stuart," continues the Viscount.
"Charles Edward is married; his brother is still
single; they never leave each other. Both of them
wear habitually the Highland costume; their tartan,
like that of their grandfather, is red with green
squares; and the white rose is their symbol. Learned
and endowed with rare talents, they cultivate the arts
30
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and literature. Their personal beauty and dis-
tinguished manners are such that they could not travel
through Scotland a few years ago without awaking
the enthusiasm of the Highlanders. Indeed, there
were some who only waited for a word from their
mouths to rise in their favour and claim the crown
for them once more."
Such is the story told by the French Viscount of the
Princes whose entry into a friend's studio had pro-
vided such a dramatic memory for Mr. Frith. From
other sources we learn that in earlier years the Stuart
brothers had done doughty deeds with their swords
in France under the banner of Napoleon, who was so
much impressed by the reckless valour of John
Sobieski in one engagement that he detached his cross
from his button-hole and, on the field of battle, pre-
sented it to the young hero. Everywhere the " hand-
some Scots " seem to have been received with dis-
tinction and to have won golden opinions.
Their later history is involved in mystery. The
younger brother, Charles Edward, is said to have died
suddenly at sea, leaving no child to inherit the barren
honours of his family. But through what strange
vicissitudes the elder brother drifted to his obscure
death in Pimlico no records tell us. To his last hour
he solemnly persisted in his claim to be the grandson
of " Charles III. of England," and rightful heir to
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the British throne; and, in spite of much that is diffi-
cult to explain in his story, none to-day can say with
certainty that his pretensions were unfounded.
It is true that the tomb of Cardinal, the Duke of
York (younger brother of Charles Edward), in St.
Peter's, Rome, bears the inscription, " Here lies the
last of the Stuarts " ; and that the Cardinal, on his
brother's death in 1788, caused a medal to be struck
bearing the Latin legend, " Henry IX., King of Eng-
land by the grace of God, but not by the will of men."
Is it possible, the sceptics argue, if Prince Charlie
had had a son or grandson living at the time, that the
Cardinal would thus have assumed a sovereignty
which was not his ; and that his tombstone would per-
petuate his memory as " the last of the Stuarts " ?
This, it must be confessed, is an argument difficult
to rebut; but against it is a weight of evidence which
makes it more than probable that the singular story
which links Dr. Cameron's romantic journey to the
sick-room near St. Rosalie with that death-bed scene
in Pimlico nearly a century later, may hold much more
truth than was known to Cardinal York, " the ninth
Henry " of England, and his adherents.
CHAPTER IV
THE WOOING OF A WIDOW
WHEN, one April day in the year 1628, Mistress
Bennett swathed herself in crape to follow the remains
of her late husband, Richard Bennett, to his last
resting-place in the God's acre of St. Olave's, Jewry,
we may be sure that her mirror reflected a face of
becoming grief, and that no thought of such worldly
vanities as beauty and gold came to invest her cloud
of sorrow with a silver halo. It was true that she was
still young, and so she was often told the fairest
woman in London City; but what were such vanities
as youth and a comely countenance in face of such a
loss as had befallen her ?
But youth will, if you give it a chance, triumph over
grief and loss, however deep; and the mirror that
reflects a pretty face will not always make its flattering
appeal in vain. And thus it was with our City dame,
who, when she had done all reasonable justice to the
memory of her departed spouse, wiped away her last
tear, and began to realise that life was a beautiful thing
after all, and held much promise for a woman who
could bring to its enjoyment both beauty and money-
bags. ^
33
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Of the former there could be no question. Every
masculine eye that rested on her comeliness dwelt there
to tell the tale. And as for the gilding her departed
husband had been one of the most substantial of
London's citizens; and was she not heir to two-thirds
of all his possessions, in addition to jewels which were
the envy of every City lady, to a small fortune in
family-plate, and to the Bennett coach with its
four "grey mares and geldings," which even
the Lord Mayor might have envied, so gorgeous
was it ?
Within three months of the last " Amen " spoken
over her husband's grave, Mistress Bennett was ready
once more to receive the homage of flattering eyes and
tongues; and even, so it was gossiped, to consider
claims to replace the worthy citizen in her arms and
favour. And there was no lack of such aspirants, for
the fame of the widow's charms and her rich dower
had travelled far beyond the City bounds; and many
a gallant with a handle to his name was only too willing
to leave Court and boudoir to fare eastward, by way
of Temple Bar, on wooing bent. And these
emissaries of Cupid were no callow youths, of empty
head and purse; but men of substance, of discreet
years, and of good standing in the world.
Curiously enough, the very first batch of lovers that
winged their way Cityward were all " birds," although
34
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
not all gay in plumage. One was Sir Sackville Crow;
another was a physician of repute, Raven by name,
though not by nature; while number three was no other
than Sir Heneage Finch, a grave and dignified
Serjeant-at-law and Recorder of London a man,
moreover, who, but two years earlier, had sat in the
Speaker's Chair in the House of Commons. Elderly
lovers all; but full of the fire and fervour of youth,
and as keen to win a lady's hand as any Court beau
of half their years.
Of this trio, the advance-guard of an army of
wooers, Sir Sackville Crow was first to make the
running. He was a man of fine presence, with, it is
said, the best-shaped leg in London town; and, more-
over, was an expert in the art of love, as the chronicles
of his earlier years prove. It was with the air of an
assured victor that, decked in his gayest feathers, Sir
Sackville began his pilgrimages to the City to do
homage at the shrine of the fair widow. To his con-
dolences Mistress Bennett lent a ready and gracious
ear, for no one could play this role more effectively
than the Treasurer of the Navy; but when his adroit
tongue turned to lighter themes she looked coldly on
his honeyed speeches and soulful eyes; and when, in
spite of such warning, he went so far as to plead for
" the prettiest hand in London City," her answer
was as decisive as prompt. To quote the vulgar
35
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
chronicle of the time, " he went away with a flea in his
ear."
To the Crow succeeded the Raven, nothing daunted
by his predecessor's discomfiture. He was no man of
sugary tongue and ogling eyes like his friend, Sir Sack-
ville. He understood women; he had studied them
for years in his West End consulting-room; and he
knew none better that it was the masterful man to
whom their hearts opened most readily. He resolved
to carry the fortress of Mistress Bennett's heart by
assault, without any preliminary trial of gentler means
of capturing it. By a liberal use of his gold he had
no difficulty in bribing her servants to be out of the
way on a certain November night; and before Mistress
Bennett had been many minutes comfortably tucked
within the sheets, the daring doctor made his entry into
her chamber. Never did foolish lover make a more
fatal mistake. Before he had got his nose well within
the room he was greeted with such shrieks of
" Thieves! " and " Murder! " as woke the
" Charleys " in Cheapside from their slumber, and
brought them pell-mell to the scene of the disturbance.
The recreant servants, whom he had bribed to
remain at least neutral, rushed to the rescue of their
mistress. The midnight intruder was caught like a
rat in a hole, and ignominiously dragged off to gaol to
answer for his outrage on decency. The next morning
36
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
he was hauled before the very last man he wished to
see in such a capacity, none other than Sir Heneage
Finch, Recorder of London, and one of his rivals for
Mistress Bennett's hand. Was ever man so unfor-
tunate ? Sir Heneage listened gravely to the serious
charge chuckling, no doubt, inwardly; and, after
reading the prisoner a severe lecture on his shameful
conduct, committed him, without bail, for trial at the
next Sessions, where a sentence of imprisonment
effectually cooled his ardour, at least for widows.
No sooner was Dr. Raven sent to quench his flames
in durance than Sir Edward Bering, recking nothing
of the disaster that had overwhelmed two rivals, pre-
sented himself in the lists. Now Sir Edward was one
of the biggest dandies of his day, with an unrivalled
record as a lady-killer. With his flowing wig,
dangling his clouded cane from his wrist, and
flourishing his gold snuff-box in his hand; with his lace
cravat, his beribboned breeches, and his atmosphere
of delicate perfume, the Kentish Baronet had, he
thought, but to come and see and conquer.
But, assured of victory though he was, he was much
too discreet to make any tactical blunders such as those
which had proved fatal to his predecessors. He
counted each step before he took it, lest a rash one
should prove disastrous. He began by worshipping
his lady at a distance with the " mute eloquence " of
37
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
adoring eyes; and before he ventured into the citadel,
sought to win its defenders to his side to make his
path smooth. But the " outworks " proved difficult
to take, as his ingenuous diary abundantly proves.
Under date November 2Oth, he writes: " Edmund
King. I adventured, but was denied. Sent up a
letter, which was returned after she had read it."
Unchecked by this first repulse, Sir Edward decided
to see what a little judicious bribery would do. Thus
the diary entries succeed one another: " November
2ist I inveigled G. Newman with 205. November
24th I did re-engage him (205.) . I did also oil the
cash-keeper (205.). November 26th I gave
Edmund Aspull (the cash-keeper) another 2os."
Surely such liberal lubrication ought to make the
machinery of conquest run smoothly; and it did for
a time, at least; for on November 2;th, just a week
after his first failure, he writes gleefully: " I sent a
second letter, which was kept." So far, so good; but
Sir Edward had not done yet with the outworks. A
few days later, he writes, " I set Sir John Skeffington
upon Matthew Cradock " an artful move, for
Cradock was not only the widow's favourite kinsman,
but her right-hand man, and thus a most valuable ally
to secure. On the same day on which Cradock's
favour was sought by proxy, Sir Edward adds to his
entry, " The cash-keeper supped with me."
38
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
The way now seemed clear for another step. Sir
Edward decided that the time had come to seek a
nearer approach to his divinity, and thus on November
3Oth he writes: " I was at the Old Jewry Church and
saw her both forenoon and afternoon "; and on the
following day he made bold to send her "a third
letter, which was also kept." On the following Sun-
day so well had matters progressed Sir Edward was
intercepted, on leaving St. Olave's Church, by George
Newman, who whispered in his ear " Good news!
good news! " and proceeded to inform him that
Mistress Bennett " liked well his carriage, and that,
if his lands were not already settled on his eldest son,
there was good hope for him." No wonder the
amorous Baronet was so delighted with such news that,
as he says, " I gladly gave him another 205."
Sir Edward was now so confident of victory that he
could not resist the temptation to announce the news
to his friend the Recorder, who not only affected to be
rejoiced at his rival's good fortune, but gave him excel-
lent advice how to continue his campaign, adding that
he himself had quite abandoned all hope of winning
the widow and had retired from the arena. How true
this statement of the crafty man of law was the sequel
will prove.
Thus emboldened, Sir Edward now took his
courage in his hands and prosecuted his suit in person.
39
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
But alas! never was widow (or maid) so difficult to
win. One day she was all sweetness and smiles, the
next she was as frigid as an iceberg. She would and
she wouldn't. She " didn't quite know her own
mind," and he " must be more patient." Finally,
when his patience was strained to the breaking point,
and when all the pleadings and arguments of his
friends proved unavailing to make the lady " toe the
line," he retired in disgust, and vowed that he had
" done with widows for ever."
The fact that the City beauty proved so coy and
elusive only served to whet the appetite of other suitors
for so tantalising a prize. One gallant after another
took up the running; all in turn to retire discomfited.
Sir Peter Temple, of Stowe, came with his long
lineage and broad acres to back him, and a Countess
to plead his suit; but he was soon sent packing. * ' But,
madam," he protested, " I have come all the way from
Buckinghamshire to win a smile from your pretty lips. "
" Then, sir," was the uncompromising answer, " I
am afraid you must go back to Buckinghamshire."
And he went.
Lady Skinner sought to win the prize for her
protege, Mr. Butler, a swarthy, if high-born, gentle-
man. " I have worn black long enough," said
Mistress Bennett; " I don't want more mourning in a
husband." Sir Henry Mainwaring, with a pedigree
40
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
as long as his purse was short, came, with the Countess
of Bridgewater to lend the glamour of fashion and rank
to his suit; but the widow declined to wed her money-
bags to an empty pocket. And even my Lord Lumley,
fresh to his coronet, although he had for supporter the
lady's brother-in-law, fared no better. Five times a
week his lordship's coach took him in state to St.
Olave's Church to join his prayers with those of the
widow, who affected to seek in piety a refuge from her
legions of lovers. The Earl of Dorset, Lord Cham-
berlain to the Queen, stooped to plead Lumley's suit;
and Mistress Bennett went so far at last as to receive
a ring from his hands. But the weeks dragged on, and
still the longed-for ' ' yes ' ' refused even to falter from
her lips, and my Lord Lumley in turn had to join the
swollen ranks of the baffled.
But in spite of such discouragement, the tide of
lovers still continued to flow and ebb, while London
held its sides in laughter. Then, on the heels of an
announcement that Mistress Bennett had decided
never to marry, but that she wished to devote her life
to " good works," the bolt fell from the " blue." One
fine morning in April, 1629, twelve months almost to
a day after her tears had rained on Master Bennett's
coffin, she slipped quietly away to St. Clement Danes'
Church, and stood at the altar by the side of Sir
Heneage Finch, ex-Speaker and Recorder of London.
41
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
The tortoise had won the race; the man who had
placidly looked on while his long train of rivals came
to conquer and retired in defeat had been laying quiet
siege to the citadel all the time, and to him the flag
was at last lowered.
Thus was the elusive widow led a second time to the
altar, although her new lease of wedded life was
destined to last no longer than two years. As the
widow of plain Master Bennett neither her beauty nor
her riches could have saved her from obscurity. As
the wife of Sir Heneage Finch she found herself allied
with noble houses, and she herself became the
ancestress of a line of Marquises.
Of her husband's seven sons, one was destined in
later years to sit on the Woolsack and to wear a coronet
as Earl of Nottingham. Her three stepdaughters all
in turn found husbands in the sons of noble houses;
while of her own two daughters by the Recorder, one
blossomed into my Lady Conway, and has a proud
place on the family tree of the Marquises of Hertford.
THE COUNTESS OF ESSEX
AFTERWARDS
COUNTESS OF SOMERSET
CHAPTER V
THE CRIME OF A COUNTESS
WHEN the Lady Frances Howard opened her eyes,
one day in the year 1593, at her father's house near
Saffron Walden, she took her place in a family-tree
that had more than its share of black sheep. Every
line of it recorded some name associated with deeds of
violence or shame, and many an ancestor had lost his
head to the executioner's axe. For five generations
all but one of her father's immediate predecessors on
that tree had ended their days in blood three of them
on the headsman's block, and one, the first Duke of
Norfolk, on Bosworth Field. Her father, Thomas
Howard, first Earl of Suffolk, had no worse crime to
his charge than embezzlement on a large scale; but her
mother won an evil reputation as a pensioner of Spain,
her country's chief enemy, and as a woman with very
lax conceptions of morality.
Nor does the black story end here; for of Frances 1
seven brothers and two sisters children of the
embezzler and the wanton scarcely one left a memory
untarnished by some discreditable episode. Even her
sister Elizabeth has come down to us as the woman
43
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
who left another man's son to assert a false claim to
her husband's Earldom of Banbury.
With such blood in her veins it would have been
strange if Frances Howard had carried a stainless
name through life. But none could have dreamt,
when she was playing so innocently in the nursery at
Audley End, that she would take a place in history
as one of the most infamous of her sex. Spending her
early years partly in a rustic environment in Essex
and partly at her father's house at Charing Cross,
Frances grew up to a beautiful girlhood without
exhibiting a sign of the evil that lay dormant in her.
She was equipped with all the armoury that brings
men to their knees beauty, gaiety, a rare charm
of manner and she might, who knows, have played a
pure and honourable part on the stage of life if she
had not come at an impressionable age under the
influence of her great-uncle, Lord Northampton.
My Lord Northampton, who was now verging on
seventy, was one of the most brilliant and charming
men of his day scholar, wit, courtier. But with this
early Howard taint in his blood, he seemed incapable
of " running straight." He was a born intriguer,
true to no cause that did not minister to his vanity or
his purse; a roue among roues; and he found an almost
fiendish pleasure in poisoning the minds and pervert-
ing the morals of those on the threshold of life. It was
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the worst of ill-luck that his beautiful grand-niece
should come under the fatal influence of a man who
was as baleful as he was irresistible in his fascination.
However the poison was administered, nothing is more
certain than that it was his influence that largely gave
Frances the bias to evil which her later life so tragically
exhibited.
Lady Frances had little opportunity to practise her
armoury of male conquest. Before she was out of
short frocks the news was published, " The Earl of
Essex and the young Lord Cranborne shall marry two
of Lord Suffolk's daughters at Court very shortly.
They only stay for the King's coming, who is looked
for in the next week." Of the brides-to-be, Frances
had at the time only seen thirteen birthdays ; while her
sister, Catherine, was a year younger. Of the bride-
grooms, the Earl of Essex was a schoolboy of fourteen,
and Lord Cranborne was barely eighteen.
As for Robert Devereux, my Lord Essex, who alone
concerns us of the two boy-bridegrooms, he was son
of that ill-starred Earl who had, a few years earlier,
ended his life on the scaffold. He had been restored
to his father's forfeited honours; had been brought up
with the King's own son (whom, by the way, he had
once soundly smacked on the head with his racquet
in a boyish quarrel) ; and had already, child as he was,
been, dubbed an M.A. at Oxford.
45
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Such was the husband to whom Lady Frances was
to give her hand in a Royal palace, though her opinion
of the match was never asked, and certainly her heart
had no voice in the matter. The mockery of a
marriage ceremony was performed at Court one
January day in 1605-6; and the nuptials were cele-
brated by a brilliant tournament and by a still more
gorgeous masque, written by Ben Jonson, at which,
we are told, " the men were clad in crimson, the
women in white; they had every one a white plume of
the richest heron's feathers, and were surpassing rich
in jewels upon their heads." The festivities at an
end, the youthful bride and groom returned to their
respective homes; and it was not until more than five
years later, after Essex had made the " grand tour,"
that they came together as man and wife.
Such nuptials could scarcely prove otherwise than
a fiasco, with an indifferent husband and a reluctant
wife. Moreover, Lady Essex, while her husband was
" gallivanting " at foreign Courts, had completely
lost her heart to Robert Carr, the King's favourite,
who had blossomed into my Lord Rochester, and was
later to become Earl of Somerset a man of strikingly
handsome person, a born courtier and Prince of
gallants, who had made many a conquest before he
enslaved Lord Essex's stay-at-home wife.
4 6
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
It needed not this complication to make the wedded
life of Essex and his Countess a pathetic failure.
Although he treated his wife with unvarying kindness
and courtesy, she returned nothing but coldness
and insults; and she refused point-blank to play
the role of wife to one man when another had her
heart.
If this had been the worst, it would have been
tragedy enough. But my Lady Essex was by no
means content with abuse and a contemptuous
indifference. Her husband stood in the path of her
pleasure; he must be removed. She consulted experts
in witchcraft and magic, and paid them to practise their
arts, with the double object of removing her husband
and strengthening the passion of Rochester, her
lover.
To a Mrs. Turner, witch and poisoner, she wrote,
" My lord is very well as ever he was, so you may see
in what miserable case I am "; and to a Dr. Fornam,
" wizard," she wrote, " My lord is lusty and merry,
and drinks with his men. I think I shall never be
happy in this world." As if such hints were not
sufficient, we have it on the testimony of a Mary Woods
that the Countess gave her a ring, with a promise of a
thousand pounds, if she would procure a poison for the
Earl ' ' that should not act within less space than three
or fojur days."
47
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
When poison and the black arts failed to achieve her
sinister purpose she turned to divorce as a door of
escape from one husband to the arms of another. And
after many months of varying fortune, she ultimately
succeeded in obtaining a decree of nullity, thanks
largely to the King's support. On the very day on
which she was thus made a free woman preparations
began for a second marriage this time to her lover,
the man of her treacherous heart Lord Rochester,
whom, in honour of the event, King James now raised
to the Earldom of Somerset.
And seldom has the Court of England witnessed so
splendid a marriage. The wedding-presents, a
chronicler tells us, were " more in value and number
than ever, I think, were given to any subject in this
land " vessels of gold and silver (from a gold
warming-pan to my Lady Shrewsbury's present of a
gold basin and ewer, two gold pots and some " vessels
all of gold ") and rich jewellery, worth many a
" king's ransom." One gorgeous masque followed
another; the Lord Mayor entertained bride and bride-
groom, at the King's own request, at a regal banquet;
and, to wind up the festivities, a " Masque of
Flowers," of unrivalled beauty, was presented in the
Banqueting House at Whitehall.
Under such brilliant auspices did Lord and Lady
Somerset's drama of wedded life open. But the drama
4 8
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
was soon to be clouded by a terrible tragedy, which
set the seal on Frances Howard's infamy. Ten days
after the venal court had made a free woman of her,
Sir Thomas Overbury died in agony in the Tower of
London, and it began to be whispered that he had been
poisoned. Sir Thomas, who had thus ended his days
miserably and in tragedy, was one of the most accom-
plished and high-minded men of his day. As a youth
he had met and made a friend of Robert Carr (Earl of
Somerset to-be) ; and through his influence had risen
high in the King's favour. He was dubbed a knight,
the ball of fortune was at his feet; but when Fortune
was smiling its sweetest on him he made two fatal
mistakes.
He offended the Queen, and was banished from
Court in consequence; more fatal still, he opposed the
connection between his " fidus Achates " and the
" base woman," Lady Essex. So strongly averse to
it was he that he bade Rochester choose between his
friend and his mistress. " Will you never leave the
company of that base woman? " was his ultimatum.
" Seeing you do so neglect my advice, I desire that
to-morrow morning we may part, and that you will
let me have that portion you know is due to me. Then
I will leave you free to stand on your own legs."
Thus Overbury made enemies not only of the
Queen, but of his old friend and (especially) of the
49
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
woman in the way of whose passion he stood thus
resolutely. Even the King, in whose favour he had
stood high, turned against him; and was easily induced
by Rochester to commit him to the Tower, on the
flimsy pretext that, when ordered to go on an Embassy
abroad, he had refused. Thus we find Overbury a
prisoner, and at the mercy of his enemies, one of whom
at least never forgave an injury; and it was not long
before their vengeance began to take shape. The first
step was to have the Lieutenant of the Tower removed,
and a more convenient " tool " put in his place.
Northampton (who had his finger in this evil pie)
arranged for the appointment of one of his creatures,
Sir Gervase Elwes, to the office; with another creature,
Richard Weston, as under-keeper.
The way thus made clear, the campaign of
vengeance and death opened. Weston first tried the
effect of white arsenic and corrosive sublimate in tarts
and jellies for the prisoner's use, bidding Elwes to say
' ' that these tarts came not from me, ' ' and warning him
not to give his wife or children any of them. But
Overbury seemed to bear a charmed life. The
poisons, it is true, made him very ill; but one after
another he mysteriously survived them, thanks pro-
bably to antidotes administered by his servant, who
seems to have suspected the attempts to poison his
master. Disgusted with these repeated failures Lady
50
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Essex appealed to an apothecary, one James Franklin,
who supplied her with seven different sorts of poison
from aqua fortis to cantharides each of which in turn
was administered to the prisoner; until, after weeks of
cruel suffering and as gallant a fight for life as ever
man made, death came to his release.
The moment Northampton heard the " good news "
he wrote to Elwes " Noble Lieutenant, if the
knave's body be foul, bury it presently; I'll stand
between you and harm ' ' ; and within a few hours of his
death Overbury's body was placed in the earth; and
Lady Essex, with a sigh of relief, resumed the prepara-
tions for her next wedding. But the new Countess
was not long left to enjoy the cup of pleasure so shame-
fully procured. A new favourite, George Villiers,
came to supplant her husband by the king's side; his
star of ascendancy had fallen. The poison conspiracy
was revealed, it is said by an apothecary's boy; and
an investigation was opened.
Lord and Lady Somerset, with all their fellow-con-
spirators, were arrested and brought to trial, one after
another, to make the well-earned journey to the
scaffold from Mrs. Turner, who was hanged in
yellow starched ruffs, and Sir Gervase Elwes, who
paid for his share in the crime on Tower Hill, to
Franklin, the apothecary, and Weston, the under-
keeper. As for Lord Somerset and that arch-con-
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
spirator his wife, they were both sentenced to death,
only, however, to receive the King's pardon, supple-
mented in the case of the Earl with an allowance of
4,000 a year!
And now the curtain descends on this drama of
passion and crime. Somerset and his Countess sur-
vived their death sentence for many miserable years of
life together in Chiswick House. They lived, we are
told, to hate the sight of each other, and finally ceased
to speak to each other. Thus in disgrace and un-
happiness, to which were added the hourly tortures of
a " loathsome disease," Frances Howard made her
exit, one August day in 1632, from the stage of life on
which she had played such an infamous part.
CHAPTER VI
THE ROMANCE OF THE SEA-CHILD
THE Earls of Mar and Kellie have many treasured
heirlooms at Alloa House and Kellie Castle, but none
of which they are prouder than the wicker cradle and
bundle of baby's clothes which recall a story as
romantic as any to be found in the annals of the
Peerage.
One winter evening in the year 1 763, when the third
of our Georges was comparatively new to his crown,
Mr. Adam Gordon was sitting with his wife before a
roaring fire in the hall of Castle Ardoch. It was a
night of storm and deluge; the rain was lashing the
window-panes, the wind was howling among the
turrets and shrieking down the chimneys, the castle
walls were trembling under the fury of the gale.
" What a terrible night ! " said Adam Gordon to his
wife, as he drew his chair nearer to the blazing logs.
" There will be many a life lost to-night at sea, unless
I am mistaken. It's the wildest storm I have known
in my time." Scarcely had the words left his lips
when through the pandemonium of the gale there came
the low, faint boom of a cannon. " There!" he ex-
53
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
claimed, as the sound, so full of portent, died away.
" Did you hear that ? I knew it. There's a vessel on
the rocks. God help those who are in her, for there
is no hope for them ! "
To summon his men-servants and, armed with lan-
terns, to sally out into the dark night on the errand
of mercy was the work of a few moments. In the
teeth of the gale, drenched and buffeted, the handful
of men fought their way to the beach, a few hundred
yards distant, and with straining eyes looked out over
the wild riot of waters. Yes; there, but a stone's throw
away was the doomed ship, beating her life
out on the cruel fangs of the rocks which guard
the coast of Ross and Cromarty from the fury of the
North Sea.
That glance was sufficient; the vessel was indeed
doomed. No boat could live for a moment in such a
sea. All they could do was to wait and watch if by
good chance any of the crew were washed ashore.
Through the long dark hours of the night the patient
vigil was kept ; the watchers saw the vessel break up,
just as the first faint streaks of dawn stole over the
sky. A few moments later a shout drew the scattered
men to a distant part of the beach where one of their
number was stooping over the strangest piece of
flotsam that was ever flung ashore by an angry
sea.
54
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
It was a wicker cradle, of curious foreign-looking
make ; and in it was lying a baby, with blue, open eyes
of wonder, smiling up at the wild group of heads bent
over it. The cradled infant thus miraculously flung
ashore was all that the sea gave up from the ill-fated
ship, save a few fragments of wreckage, none of which
gave any clue to the identity of the vessel.
It was a strange but happy procession that made its
way back in the early morning to the hospitable shelter
of Castle Ardoch, preceded by Adam Gordon with
the sea-baby warmly tucked inside his overcoat, and
followed by John Anderson, cradle in hand; and it
was a warm welcome that the infant received from the
motherly arms of Dame Gordon, who little dreamt as
later she tucked it in the warm bed between her two
little daughters that the waif of the sea was bringing
to her house a coronet in each of her baby hands. She
was destined, as this story will prove, to make a Coun-
tess of each of her child-bedfellows in the years to
come.
Who was this child of the sea and the storm who
had come thus dramatically into the hospitable home
of the Gordons ? In vain did Adam and his lady try
to solve the mystery. There was no clue or at least
no clue that was of any use to the problem. That
the wicker cradle, the frail bark which had brought
the babe so miraculously over the raging waters, was
55
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
from a foreign land there could be no doubt. But
where was that land ?
The child's clothing was beautiful in quality and
texture; she was evidently the daughter of well-to-do
parents; but it, too, furnished no clue beyond two
embroidered and interwoven initials which conveyed
no information as to identity. The wreck-baby was
a complete mystery, as strange as the wonder of her
advent; but she was none the less a welcome guest,
who should be as carefully and lovingly tended as
their own little girls.
Thus the " Princess," as Adam Gordon used to
call his sea-baby, found new parents in Adam and his
good wife ; and never for one moment did they regret
that black night of storm that had given her to them.
Every year she grew in strength and beauty and win-
someness. She was a little fairy who won all hearts,
from those of her playmates and foster-sisters to the
grim-visaged men-servants who to a man were the
slaves of the little " Missie " they had saved from the
sea.
Thus happily the years passed. The " Princess "
had blossomed into a lovely girl of sixteen ; her sisters,
equally fair, were a few years older, when the curtain
was raised on the second scene of this strange drama.
Again it was a night of wild storm and disaster ; and
again, through the thunders of wind and sea was heard
56
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the boom of the distress-gun ; and once more, as six-
teen years earlier, Adam Gordon and his men fared
forth in the dark night on rescue bent.
This time, as before, the vessel was ground to
pieces on the deadly rocks ; and of all on board only
one was yielded to the shore and to life by the greedy
sea. It was a man, battered, bruised, and uncon-
scious, lashed to a piece of wreckage. Happily, life
still lingered, and the senseless man was borne swiftly
to Castle Ardoch, restoratives were administered, and
when consciousness returned he was put to bed.
The following morning the second sole survivor of
a wreck was able to thank the good Samaritans, his
rescuers, and to explain who he was and how he came
to be their guest. He was, he said, a Swedish mer-
chant hailing from Gothenburg, and had been voyag-
ing to Scotland when the storm flung his ship on the
rocky coast of Ross and Cromarty. A few days later
he was sufficiently recovered to join his host at the
family meals, and thus to make the acquaintance of
his daughters, and of their sister, the pretty sixteen-
year-old " Princess."
Then it was that Adam Gordon told him the story
of that other night, many years earlier, which had
brought such a welcome guest into his home, a story
to which the stranger listened with growing interest
and excitement. " That is indeed remarkable," said
57
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the stranger on its conclusion ; " and to me of peculiar
interest. I will tell you why. It is sixteen years
since my sister left India in a vessel of which nothing
more was ever heard with certainty. It was rumoured,
however, that she had been wrecked on the Scottish
coast. And what is more singular, my sister had with
her a baby girl, an infant only a few months old.
How strange it would be if this young lady," pointing
to the " Princess," " should prove to be my lost sister's
child, and thus my niece. May I see the cradle in
which the child was flung ashore ?"
The wicker cradle, which had been carefully pre-
served, was brought for inspection; and as the mer-
chant examined it his excitement increased. It was
undoubtedly of foreign make, and might well have
been Indian. " Have you any other clue?" he asked.
The baby-clothes were now produced, and at sight of
the embroidered initials the stranger exclaimed, " Yes,
it must be so. Those are the initials of my sister and
her husband. This young lady, whom, like myself,
the sea has brought to your home is surely my niece,
my dear sister's daughter!"
Such was the dramatic scene of which Castle Ardoch
was the setting one winter day in the year 1779. The
discovery, however welcome to the Swedish merchant,
was by no means equally welcome to Adam Gordon
58
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and his family, who feared that now they would lose
the girl whom they had learned to love so well.
Nor were their fears misplaced, for the merchant
proceeded to assert his claim to his niece. " It is,"
he said, " a poor return for your great kindness to try
to rob you of one of your daughters. But I am com-
paratively a rich man, with no child of my own; and
I owe it to my dear sister to take her place as the
natural guardian of her daughter. Will you at least
allow her to come to me for a year? If, at the end of
the year, she wishes to return to you, I will put no
obstacle in her way."
"Oh, I am so happy here!" pleaded the "Prin-
cess." "Don't take me away!" In vain did Mr.
and Mrs. Gordon, who, whatever the cost to them-
selves, felt that she should not refuse such a tempting
offer, add their persuasions to those of her uncle.
And it was only on condition that one of her " sisters "
should accompany her that she at last tearfully con-
sented to leave for a time the home she loved.
Thus it was that, when the merchant left Castle
Ardoch, he took with him to Sweden, not only his
niece, but one of his host's daughters, who thus found
themselves translated to a new world of gaiety, far
removed from the peaceful humdrum days of their
Scottish home. At Gothenburg their life was a con-
59
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
stant round of pleasure; and it was not long before
the two beautiful girls had lovers at their feet.
Among Miss Anne Gordon's wooers was Thomas
Erskine, a wealthy merchant of Gothenburg, and a
scion of an old Scottish house, who made a speedy
conquest of Adam Gordon's daughter. It was not
only a desirable match in all ways, but it was a true
union of hearts; and when the wooer wrote to Scot-
land for permission to make Anne his wife, a favour-
able answer was not long in coming.
But excellent as the match was, we may be sure that
Anne Gordon, as she stood at the Gothenburg altar
with her husband, little dreamt that she was one day
to wear a Countess's coronet. She knew that Thomas
Erskine was of noble birth. He could look back, on
his family-tree, to a long line of distinguished ances-
tors, headed by one Sir Robert, who was Scotland's
Great Chamberlain when the second Alexander was
king in the fourteenth century; and among those
ancestors was a long list of Earls of Kellie. But
between him and the Kellie coronet at that time were
more than a dozen good lives, and if anyone had told
him on his wedding-day that he would live to bear the
title he would have laughed aloud.
The coronet, however, came to Thomas Erskine
when his wife had worn her wedding-ring a score of
years ; and Adam Gordon's daughter Anne lived to be
60
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
a Countess, thanks to the little sea-waif who had, by
such strange ways, led her to her husband. Nor was
this the extent of the good fortune which the " Prin-
cess " brought to the family of Castle Ardoch.
Before Anne Gordon had been a wife a year her
sister Johanna arrived in Gothenburg to spend a few
months as her guest ; and there she met and learnt to
love Methven Erskine, the handsome young brother
of her sister's husband; and for the second time the
wedding-bells were set a-ringing.
Methven Erskine was also a substantial citizen of
the Swedish town; and when, in process of time,
Thomas, ninth Earl of Kellie and eighth Baronet, was
laid in the family vault, Methven succeeded him in
his titles and dignities, and made a Countess of Adam
Gordon's second daughter. And thus it was that the
sea-child brought two coronets with her in her wicker
cradle when she was washed ashore that stormy night
in the year 1763.
As for the " Princess " herself, she could give
coronets to others, but none came to her. Nor did
she wish for one ; for she found all the happiness she
desired in the plain untitled husband who won her
heart. He was the richest of all Gothenburg's mer-
chants; and when to his money-bags was added the
fortune that fell to his wife on her uncle's death, the
" Princess " more than justified Adam Gordon's pet
61
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
name by a hospitality and, above all, a charity which
made her at once the most splendid and beloved
woman in Gothenburg.
THE LADY ELLENBOROUGH
CHAPTER VII
A QUEEN OF THE DESERT
THIRTY years ago a correspondent of the Viennese
" German Gazette " wrote from Beyrout : " I met
to-day an old acquaintance, the camel-driver, Sheik
Abdul, and he told me that his wife was dead. Her
name was once known all through the East. Sheik
Abdul is the ninth husband of Lady Ellenborough,
whom I met for the first time about thirty years ago
at Munich, just after she had eloped with Prince
Schwartzenberg from the residence of her first hus-
band. She then went to Italy, where, as she told me
herself, she was married six times in succession."
Such was the singular story which, a generation or
so ago, set tongues wagging from one end of Eng-
land to the other, and gave a new zest to an old and
almost forgotten scandal, the heroine of which had
shocked Society by her unconventionalities as she had
captivated it by her beauty and charms in the days of
George IV.
The heroine of this strange romance, one of the
63
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
most remarkable in the annals of our Peerage, was
cradled two years after Trafalgar. The only daugh-
ter of Sir Henry Digby, G.C.B., a valiant Admiral
of the Blue, and sister of the ninth Baron Digby, she
could boast a noble lineage stretching back to the
days when Everard Digby fell fighting valiantly for
the Red Rose on Towton Field, leaving behind him
seven sons, all of whom wielded deadly swords against
Richard III. at Bosworth. Her mother was the Lady
Jane Elizabeth, daughter of " Mr. Coke of Holkham,"
first Earl of Leicester, who had worn mourning for her
first husband, Viscount Andover, before she was led
to the altar by the embryo Admiral.
In early childhood Jane Elizabeth Digby gave
promise of that exceptional beauty which made con-
quest so fatally easy to her in later years ; and also of
the waywardness and defiance of convention which
were to shock her family and friends and to supply so
much material for the gossip-mongers. Long before
she emerged from short frocks she was at once the
idol and despair of her relatives, a wild and bewitch-
ing madcap who laughed at all restraint and drove
her parents to distraction by her escapades. Once she
disappeared for days to share the roving life of a band
of gipsies. On another occasion, it is said, she eloped
with a handsome young groom, and was only rescued
6 4
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
from Gretna Green after a wild chase over several
counties.
Such was the heroine of our story in the days of her
girlhood, a ravishingly beautiful imp of mischief,
laughing her way out of one escapade only to engage
in another still more daring and unconventional; and,
in spite of all her wildness and waywardness, making
all who knew her her veriest slaves by the magic of her
winsomeness and her beauty. Of her beauty at this
time we have the following description: " Her eyes
were large and of an exquisite blue such as I have
never seen in any other human face; her lips, parted in
a merry roguish smile, revealed teeth like flawless
pearls; her face was a perfect oval, and her complexion
had the delicate bloom of a peach. Her figure was
instinct with vitality and an incomparable grace
of movement. But her chief glory was her hair, which
fell, a rippling golden cascade, down to her knees."
That a maiden dowered with such rare charms had
many a lover at her feet before she left the schoolroom
goes without saying; but never was maid so tantalising
and elusive. She would transport her wooers to
heaven one moment, and plunge them in despair the
next; when they protested undying devotion, she broke
into peals of merry laughter and told them not to be
so absurd." One by one the wooers retired from
65
ti
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the list in despair. But the little madcap was not
destined to escape thus easily.
Among her slaves was one of sterner metal, who
determined to win the prize from all rivals, in spite of
a heavy handicap. Edward, second Lord Ellen-
borough, was not only nearly a score of years older
than the maid he set himself to win, but he had already
worn mourning for one wife, a daughter of the Mar-
quis of Londonderry. He was, too, grave beyond his
years, and a man of no great physical attractions. In
spite, however, of his handicap, he laid such persistent
siege to the young lady's heart, and made such effective
use of an eloquent tongue and his gift of diplomacy,
that one September day in 1824 the wedding-bells were
set a-ringing, and the madcap left her school-books to
become my Lady Ellenborough.
It would have been well, however, if my lord had
been less resolute in his wooing, or had taken his heart
and his coronet elsewhere. The grave, almost
middle-aged statesman, who was later to rule over
India and the King's Navy, had too little in common
with his high-spirited girl-wife to make the nuptials
a success. Trouble began almost before the honey-
moon had waned; and the climax was reached when
handsome, dark-eyed Prince Schwartzenberg came on
the scene, and brought the battery of his fascinations
to bear on the lovely and unhappy wife.
66
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
To such a situation there could be but one ending.
Lady Ellenborough had neither the wish nor the power
to resist the seductions of the Prince and the prospect
of escape from her misery which he offered her.
Within two years of wearing the orange-blossom for
one man she ran away with his successor in her affec-
tions; and, four years later, the outraged husband
sought the aid of Parliament to dissolve a union which
should never have been entered into.
For a few years Lady Ellenborough lived more or
less happily with her Prince, to whom she bore two
children; until her dream ended in a tragic awakening.
The Prince, wearied at last of her charms, basely
deserted her; and the unhappy woman, divorced by her
husband and now abandoned by her lover, fled to Italy
to hide her shame and her sorrow . Of her story during
the next few years nothing appears to be known with
certainty. It may be true, as stated by the corres-
pondent of the " German Gazette,'* " that she found
in Italy half-a-dozen husbands in quick succession,"
although this story is not supported by her friend and
champion, Isabel, Lady Burton, who merely says, " I
am afraid she led a life for a year or two over which it
is kinder to draw a veil . ' ' The truth, it is to be feared,
is one which will not bear too close scrutiny. Nor,
when she left Italy, does her history for a time become
any clearer. The only light on it (and probably a
67
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
doubtful one) is thrown by the " German Gazette "
correspondent, who says: " In 1848 I met her at
Athens, where she concluded an eighth marriage with
a Greek Colonel, Count Theodoki. This, however,
lasted only for a short time."
It is to Lady Burton that we must look for an
authentic account of the later history of this remark-
able woman, which far surpasses in romance all that
preceded it. It was while Lady Burton was living at
Damascus, during her husband's Consulate there, that
she first met our vagrant heroine; and, like everyone
else, fell under the spell of her charms.
" Among the most interesting of all the personalities
who attended my receptions," her ladyship records in
her diary, " was Lady Ellenborough, known at
Damascus as the Honourable Jane Digby El Mezrab.
She was a most romantic and picturesque personality;
one might say she was Lady Hester Stanhope's
successor."
After outlining her history as far as we have followed
it, Lady Burton continues: " She then tired of Europe,
and conceived the idea of visiting the East, and of
imitating Lady Hester Stanhope and other European
ladies, who became more Eastern than the Easterns.
She arrived at Beyrout, and went to Damascus, where
she arranged to go to Bagdad, across the desert. For
this journey a Bedouin escort was necessary, and the
68
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
conduct of this devolved on Sheik Mijwal, a younger
brother of the Mezrab tribe. On the journey the
young Sheik fell in love with this beautiful woman, and
she fell in love with him. The romantic picture of
becoming a queen of the desert suited her wild and
roving fancy. She married him, in spite of all opposi-
tion, according to Mohammedan law. At the time I
came to Damascus she was living half the year in a
house just within the city gates; the other half of the
year she passed in the desert in the tents of the Bedouin
tribe, living absolutely as a Bedouin woman. When I
first saw her she was a most beautiful woman, though
sixty-one years of age. She wore one blue garment,
and her beautiful hair fell in two long plaits to the
ground."
It is an eloquent tribute to the enduring beauty and
fascinations of this singular woman that, on the verge
of old age, she could so captivate this young Arab that
he not only fell headlong in love with her, but was
willing to divorce his Moslem wives in order to marry
her. But surely never in the history of any aristocracy
was there such a strange and ill-assorted union as this
between the lovely, high-bred daughter of centuries
of noble ancestors and the " dirty little black," as
Lady Burton describes him in one entry in her diary.
" I went to see her one day," her ladyship records;
" and when he opened the door to me I thought at
69
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
first he was a native servant. I could understand her
leaving a coarse, cruel husband, much older than her-
self, whom she never loved; I could understand her
running away with Schwartzenberg; but the contact
with that black skin I could never understand. Her
Sheik was very dark. All the same, he was a very
intelligent and charming man in any light but as a
husband. That made me shudder! "
That Lady Ellenborough was deeply in love with
her dusky consort there can be no question. She was
the slave of his every wish. When in the desert, she
used to milk his camels, prepare his meals, stand and
wait on him as he ate, wash his hands, face, and feet;
and she gloried in discharging these menial offices for
a man who seemed unworthy to tie her shoelace.
In spite of this daily degradation and the constant
association with the semi-savages of her husband's
tribe, Lady Ellenborough " never lost anything of the
English lady, nor the softness of a woman. She was
always," we are told, " the perfect lady in sentiment,
voice, manners, and speech. She never said anything
you could wish otherwise. She kept all her husband's
respect, and was the mother and queen of his tribe."
And her life, apart from such menial work as her con-
ception of wifely duties imposed on her, was that of a
highly-refined, cultivated English lady. She occu-
pied herself with painting, sculpture, or music, in all
70
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
of which she was highly proficient; she tended her
flowers, and was devoted to her Arab mares, on which
she loved to race over the desert, with flushed cheeks,
sparkling eyes, and her glorious hair floating behind
like a golden pennon as wild and untrammelled a
creature as in the long gone days when she galloped
her pony over the fields and fences of England.
Although her eyes would fill with tears when speak-
ing to Lady Burton of England, her people, and old
times; and although they would light up with glory at
the very mention of Schwartzenberg, who was beyond
doubt the love of her life, she confessed that her
happiest years were those spent with her Arab husband
on the outskirts of Damascus, or leading the free,
roving life of the desert.
At Damascus, indeed, she reverted for six months
of each year to a semi- European life. She was highly
popular not only with the small European colony there
" we all flocked around her with affection and
friendship," one of them says but with the natives,
who rendered to her the homage due to a great and
gracious lady; and to all alike she was equally charm-
ing. It was only to strangers that she was at all re-
served. Indeed, she refused to see anyone who did
not bring a letter of introduction from a friend or a
relative. " But this," to quote Lady Burton again,
" did not hinder every ill-conditioned passer-by from
71
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
boasting of his intimacy with her, and recounting the
untruths which he invented -pour se fa'ire valoir, or to
sell his book or newspaper at a better profit."
Between these two remarkable women a deep and
lasting affection sprang up in these Damascus days, a
friendship so intimate that Lady Ellenborough con-
fided to the Consul's wife the task of writing her
biography, which she dictated to her day by day.
" She did not spare herself," says Lady Burton,
" dictating the bad with the same frankness as the
good. I was pledged not to publish this until after
her death and that of certain relatives."
When in later years a notice of her death appeared
in the " German Gazette," Lady Burton was first in
the field to still the voice of scandal by paying an
eloquent tribute to her friend. " To the last," she
says, " she was fresh and young; beautiful, brave, re-
fined and delicate. Her heart was noble; she was
charitable to the poor. She fulfilled all the duties of
a good Christian lady and an Englishwoman." The
report, however, was premature, circulated, it is said,
by one of her ladyship's enemies, and was contradicted
by Lady Ellenborough herself, who wrote to a friend
in England to say that so far from being dead she was
enjoying the best of health, and hoped to survive her
obituary-notice many years.
As a matter of fact, she survived her reported death
72
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
nearly nine years, leaving many devoted friends and
admirers to mourn her loss, and happy to the last in
her Bedouin life. " She had but one fault (and who
knows it was hers?)," Lady Burton says. " Let us
hide it, and shame those who seek to drag up the
adventures of her wild youth to tarnish so good
a memory."
73
CHAPTER VIII
THE POET AND THE COUNTESS
OF the many women who in turn caught Lord Byron's
volatile fancy and enslaved his heart none is invested
with quite the same glamour of romance as Teresa
Guiccioli, the lovely Italian of whom, if her love was
not " Byron's best reward," it is true that " His
laurels twine about her name."
It was when Byron, driven from England by the
storm of obloquy that followed his wife's desertion,
was seeking a refuge and distraction on the Continent
that he met the woman who was destined to play such
a conspicuous part in his life's drama. Disgusted
with the world, heart-sick of its vanities and dis-
illusions, and craving, as he always craved, the love of
woman, he found in Teresa Guiccioli a new savour to
life, and a passion and romantic temperament which
matched his own.
At the time of the first meeting of these two lovers,
Teresa had seen but sixteen summers. The daughter
of Count Gamba, an Italian nobleman, she had only
left convent walls a year when her hand was given to
Count Guiccioli, a man of large possessions, but older
74
THE COUNTESS GUICCIOLI
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
than her own father. The Count had already buried
two wives when he led his schoolgirl bride to the altar;
and it was perhaps inevitable that this union of a
middle-aged widower to a high-spirited and beautiful
girl on the threshold of womanhood should give small
promise of happiness. Teresa's pretty head was full
of romance; released from the dreariness of the con-
vent, she was eager to drink deep of her new freedom
and pleasure; and there was not a single craving that
her twice-widowed husband was able to satisfy.
She had a liberal share of the supreme dower of
beauty eyes large, languishing, and as deeply blue
as the skies of her native land; " amazingly long eye-
lashes, arched eyebrows, wickedly pretty teeth; and a
mass of magnificent hair so absolutely golden that if a
guinea-gold fillet of the deepest yellowness ever seen
in gold had been put about her head, the tress and the
ornament would have been precisely the same hue and
quality of colour." Her neck, shoulders, arms, and
bust were superb in their modelling. Such was Count
Guiccioli's third wife one of the fairest of Italy's
daughters when chance led to her the steps of the
man of whom Sir Walter Scott wrote, " the beauty of
Byron is one which makes one dream."
It was Fate that brought together this supremely
lovely girl and the handsomest man of his age a man,
moreover, skilled in all the arts of love, a poet of
75
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
European fame, and the hero of a hundred romantic
stories, as well known in Italy as in the England
whose dust he had shaken off his feet. Each had
made a loveless match, and each empty heart was
yearning for its ideal lover.
It was one day in the autumn of 1818, at one of the
Countess Benzoni's receptions in Venice, when Teresa
had worn her uncongenial wedding-ring but half a
year, that the fateful meeting took place. The
Countess had been taken to the reception, much
against her will, by her husband. She was ennuyee
and in no mood to be amiable to anyone. When his
hostess asked the poet if she might introduce him to
the Countess he consented with ill-grace. He had no
wish to make new acquaintances. " No," he said,
" I cannot know her " adding with a touch of
sarcasm, " She is too beautiful."
The introduction made, a few minutes sufficed to
revolutionise life for both. The superlative loveliness
and charm of the girl- Countess made a slave of the
poet: Byron's " matchless beauty " changed the
whole world for her. Seldom has passion blazed into
flame with such fatal quickness. " At parting," the
Countess says, " Lord Byron wrote something on a
paper and handed it to me." What that " some-
thing " was we do not know; but we know that from
that first meeting the " die was cast." No day passed
76
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
without its sweet hours together until, after eleven days
of " fearful joys," the Count left Venice for his annual
visit to his Romagnese estates, taking his wife with
him.
The lovers were separated and disconsolate.
Teresa, we are told, fainted three times on the first
day's journey; but never failed to write to her absent
poet at every stage. As for Byron, he spent a leaden
month in Venice, vainly trying to drown his sorrows
in drink, until, unable to bear his exile longer, he in
turn started for Ravenna, pouring out his soul in
poetic yearnings on the way.
When at last he reached the goal of his desires he
learnt, to his dismay, that his beloved Countess was
seriously ill. He was distracted with grief and alarm.
The unsuspecting Count, hearing of his arrival, invited
him to the palace. " It will distract my wife in her
illness," he said; and Byron was relatively happy
again. He was near her, even when he could not see
her; and that was bliss for him. He spent hours poring
over medical books, and gave the Count no peace until
he had summoned Aglietti, the most famous doctor in
all Italy.
For two months the Countess lay on her bed of sick-
ness. Byron was convinced that she was in consump-
tion, and that she would surely die and leave him. " I
never even could keep alive a dog that I liked or that
77
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
liked me," he groaned; and, to find a vent for his grief
and despair, wrote reams of verses, such as
" I heard thy fate without a tear,
Thy loss with scarce a sigh ;
And yet thou wert surpassing dear,
Too loved of all to die."
"I see my Dama every day," Byron wrote to
Murray. " I do not know what I should do if she
died; but I ought to blow my brains out, and I hope I
should."
Byron might have spared himself such tragedy, for
within two months his Countess had made a sur-
prisingly rapid recovery, and was her radiant self
again, laughing at all his fears, and no doubt rejoicing
in such evidences of her conquest. His wife now re-
stored to health, the Count prepared to move on to
Bologna. The poet, as an alternative, proposed to
his lady-love that they should fly together; while she,
dreading the disgrace of leaving her husband, sug-
gested that she should feign death, allow herself to be
committed to the vault, and then should escape secretly
to his arms, free to spend the rest of her life with the
man she adored.
Both projects, however, failed; and we find his lord-
ship writing, " My mistress dear, who has fed my heart
upon smiles and wine for the last two months, set off
for Bologna with her husband this morning; and it
78
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
seems that I follow her at three to-morrow morning. I
cannot tell how our romance will end " After a
few more days of stolen happiness together, the restless
Count was off again on his journeys, this time to his
Romagnese estates; and Byron was left disconsolately
behind, " alternating between fury and acute depres-
sion." Day after day he visited the deserted home of
his vanished love, wandering through the rooms made
sacred by her presence, turning over her books and
writing in them.
In her copy of " Corinne " he writes a long letter to
his (l dearest Teresa," in which he says: " I have read
this book in your garden. My love, you were absent,
or else I could not have read it. You will recognise
the handwriting of him who passionately loved you;
and you will divine that over a book which was yours
he could only think of love. In that word, beautiful
in all languages, but most so in yours Amor mio is
comprised my existence here and hereafter my
destiny rests with you; and you are a woman, seventeen
years of age, and two out of a convent. I wish that
you had stayed there with all my heart, or at least that
I had never met you in your married state. But all
this is too late; I love you and you love me. But /
more than love you. . . ."
In the following month the Count returned to
Bologna with his wife, only to start again for Ravenna;
79
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
this time leaving her behind him, to Byron's delight.
This was a golden opportunity not to be lost by the
lovers. As soon as the Count was well out of the
way, they left Bologna for Venice, where they made
their home together for a few blissful weeks at the
poet's country villa at La Mira; and here Byron first
began to show signs of being a little weary of his
Countess.
When Moore paid a visit to Venice he found him
greatly changed. He had grown stout, was wearing
a moustache, and on his long hair he wore a most
eccentric headgear. He made no concealment of the
fact that he was bored, and hailed Moore's arrival as
at least a temporary escape from fetters which, however
golden, had become irksome. He even proposed to
leave his Countess, to accompany his friend to Rome;
but Moore put his foot down. ' You cannot leave
her in such a position," he said; " it would be most
humiliating to her."
A little later we find him writing to Murray, " I
have got the poor girl into a scrape; and as neither her
birth nor her rank, nor her connections by birth and
marriage are inferior to my own, I am in honour bound
,to support her through." Satiety had now set in, and
passion had degenerated to a belated sense of honour.
Lady Caroline Lamb had described Byron, once her
ardent lover, as " mad, bad, and dangerous to know ";
80
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and the Countess Guiccioli was to learn how true the
description was.
At this stage the Count, whose suspicions had slept
too long, demanded the restoration of his wife.
" Count Guiccioli comes to Venice next week," Byron
wrote to Hoppner; " and I am requested to consign
his wife to him, which shall be done. What you say
of the long evenings at the Mira or Venice reminds me
of what Curran said to Moore. ' So I hear you have
married a pretty woman and a very good creature, too
an excellent creature. Pray now, how do you
pass your evenings? 1 It is a of a question."
When her husband arrived at Venice to claim her,
the Countess wept and raged and pleaded but she
had to go, and once more she and her still beloved poet
were separated; and Byron, no doubt secretly glad to
be thus easily rid of her, prepared to return to Eng-
land, and, if possible, to arrange a reconciliation with
his wife. Meanwhile Teresa, love-sick as ever,
fretted and pined, and at last made herself so seriously
ill that her husband, in great alarm, sent a letter to
Byron begging him to come to her.
When the summons arrived Byron was on the point
of starting for England. He was, in fact, about to
step into the gondola, in which his luggage had been
placed, when the Count's imploring letter was placed
in hi hand. The next day he was back in the toils,
81
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and writing to Murray, " Your Blackwood accuses me
of treating women harshly. It may be so; but I have
been their martyr. My whole life has been sacrificed
to them and by them. " It was in such a spirit that the
poet returned to the side of the woman to whom a few
months earlier he had written, " I more than love you.
. . . . My destiny rests with you."
For some weeks we now find him an unwilling guest
in the Guiccioli palace bored to death, and writing,
" I came here because I was called, and will go the
moment I see what may render my departure proper.
My attachment has neither the blindness of the
beginning nor the microscopic accuracy of the close of
such attachments." Even the blind eyes of the
Countess were at last being opened to the truth of
Caroline Lamb's statement, " Oh, better far to have
died than to have listened to Glenarvon! "
But emancipation for both was now drawing near.
The Count insisted that his wife should dismiss her
lover. The Countess laughed in his face, and retired
to her father's house, where she rarely caught any
glimpse of her lover. She wrote pitiful appeals to
him, when her husband threatened to put her into a
convent. " Byron! I am in despair! If I must
leave you here without knowing when I shall see you
again, if it is your will that I should suffer so cruelly,
I am resolved to remain."
82
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Once more he joined her at Pisa writing to
Moore, " I set out most unwillingly, foreseeing the
most evil results for all." But he chafed more and
more against his fetters. He longed to escape to
Greece, to take part in the struggle for freedom that
was raging there. He was sick of love as of poetic
fame, and was now dying to win laurels with his sword.
On the night of July I3th, 1822, he went on board the
Hercules, which was to sail for Greece at sunrise. A
storm compelled the captain to put back to port, and
Byron decided to look once more on the woman he had
loved and betrayed; but when he knocked at the door
of her villa he was told, " The Signora had departed."
The house was still and dark; and it was with a sigh
of relief that he walked away. A few hours later he
was sailing to " where glory waited him," and
writing, " I am better now than I have been for
years."
He never saw the Countess again. Nine months
after he had turned his steps from her darkened and
desolate villa he drew his last breath at Missolonghi.
CHAPTER IX
A RIGHT HONOURABLE " JACK TAR "
MANY of our Peers have come to their coronets and
ancestral estates by capricious turns of the wheel of
Fortune ; but not one of them all under circumstances
so full of romance and tragedy as gave a seat in the
House of Lords to His Excellency the Earl of Aber-
deen, Viceroy of Ireland, one January day forty-four
years ago. This strange story is now almost for-
gotten, but there are some who never see the 27th
day of January on the calendar without paying a
tribute of regret to George, sixth Earl, over whose
brief life the waters of a distant sea closed on that ill-
fated day in 1870.
It was to a proud heritage that George Hamilton
Gordon was born one December day seventy years
ago. He was, if he lived, the assured heir to the titles
of Earl, Viscount, and Baron, and to the large estates
which were then enjoyed by his grandfather, the fourth
lord. He had in his veins the blood of numbers of
well-born ancestors, from the days when Patrick
Gordon of Methlic played a leading part in Scotland
under the first James; and he himself would be the
8 4
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
sixth of a line of Earls who had mated with the
daughters of great Scottish houses.
Such was the heritage of George Gordon, who was
fated, although the Earldom was then his, to end his
days as a seaman before the mast of a small trading-
vessel, and disguised by a name not his own, before
he had seen his thirtieth birthday.
As a boy, this heir to the Aberdeen honours was not
as other boys of noble birth. There was a wayward,
nomadic strain in his blood which no parental frowns
or correction could control. Long before he had
reached his 'teens he announced his intention to be-
come a sailor. He was never happy except when he
was on the sea ; and, we are told, he would steal away
from the castle that was his home and spend night
after night with the herring-fishermen of Boddom,
slipping back to bed early the next morning before the
castle was awake. His chosen companions were the
fisher-lads and men; his favourite haunts the quay
and the beach; and his greatest delight a seat in a
boat.
For rank and ceremonial he cared not a fig. To the
fisher-folk of Boddom he was just plain " Geordie
Gordon " ; and plain Geordie he consistently remained
to his last day, whether he was known in the Peerage-
books as Baron Haddo (a courtesy title which was his
while still in the 'teens), or as the Right Honourable
85
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the Earl of Aberdeen, double Viscount and fourfold
Baron of his later years.
But much as he yearned for the free, unconventional
life of the sea, he was denied all opportunity of tasting
it so long as his grandfather or father was alive. And
it was only when his father's death made a free man of
him that he was able to realise his life's ambition.
One January day in 1866 the Earl (for such he now
was) said " Good-bye " to his mother and sisters and
sailed from Liverpool, ostensibly on a visit to his
uncle, the Hon. Arthur Gordon, who at the time was
Governor of New Brunswick.
If it were possible to cure a landsman of his passion
for the sea, that voyage should surely have cured
Lord Aberdeen ; for the passage lasted through forty-
one days of almost unbroken tempest. But the howl-
ing of the gale and the creaking of the ship were as
music to his lordship, who landed in New Brunswick
more determined than ever to forget his Earldom in
the rollicking life of a sailor.
For a month he was his uncle's guest, feted, much
to his disgust, as a British nobleman. Then one day
he disappeared ; and as " George Osborne " we soon
find him working before the mast on an ocean tramp
bound for the Canaries.
What his fellow-sailors thought of the new recruit
we learn from one Hawkins, who says : " A person of
86
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the name of George Osborne joined the ship as a sea-
man. Osborne and I were in the same watch. We
became very intimate. I had myself enjoyed a good
education, and I soon found that he was much my
superior in that, but we took to each other. When
Osborne joined the ship he was not dressed as a
sailor, and I was surprised to find that he had shipped
as one. His hands were tender, and they soon got
blistered. Mine were then in a similar state, and we
joked about it. But he was always active, willing,
and energetic, and took a fair share of all the work.
He made himself most popular with officers and crew.
He told me ' Osborne ' was an assumed name, and
that his real name was ' Gordon,' but he said I must
not mention it on board the ship."
Such was the impression George Osborne, seaman
and Earl, created on his mates on board the brig
R. Wylie; and this excellent character he maintained
to the last that of a willing worker, a genial, kind-
hearted sailor, and a good " pal." All the grit of the
Gordons was required in those early, rough days of
sailor-life; and it carried George Osborne triumph-
antly through them.
From the brig R. Wylie he next found himself
among the crew of the schooner Arthur Burton, carry-
ing a cargo of corn to Vera Cruz ; and this is the testi-
moay paid to Osborne by a shipmate called Small :
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
" I observed that Osborne, in helping to discharge the
cargo at Vera Cruz, did not appear to work like a man
who had been used to it. His hands seemed soft, and
his legs seemed to totter when carrying the sacks of
corn. But he never gave in; but he said to me he
could not expect to carry as long as one of us fellows
could."
Not one of the shipmates seemed to have had any
suspicion of the rank of Osborne. They recognised,
naturally, that he was their superior in education and
probably in social status ; but if anyone had told them
that " Gentleman George " (as his nickname was) was
a great Scottish nobleman we may be sure they would
have laughed loud and long.
Small, who was on greater terms of intimacy with
Osborne than any of his fellows, supplies an amusing
confirmation of this fact; for when, later, he was pro-
moted to the rank of mate on the schooner Zeyla, he
says : " The mate divides the watches with the cap-
tain. As mate, it was my duty to select one man to
be in my watch; and I selected George for this pur-
pose. I knew I could chat freely with him, though I
was an officer. He would not take advantage of it as
many men would."
Could anything be more deliciously humorous than
this naive confession ? The mate of a tramp-schooner
chooses an Earl for his watch, because, forsooth, his
88
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
lordship would not take any advantage of the intimacy
of his superior officer !
But to return. At Vera Cruz Osborne had the first
of many narrow escapes from death. The Mexican
war was raging at the time he was helping to unload
a cargo of corn, and the shells of the bombarders
were shrieking past his ears. On one occasion a
cannon-ball struck a building within a few feet of
where he was standing. " Until the firing ceased,"
he wrote to his mother, the Countess, " I remained
stationary, with my head through the hole the ball
had made ! I thought it unlikely that another shot
would come just to that same spot; but while I was
there I saw seven people killed."
A few months later death was again on Osborne's
track. While his vessel was lying in Philadelphia
harbour, a terrible fire broke out in the middle of the
night and, as he tells his mother, " all on board would
have been burned up if it had not been for another
vessel that gave the alarm."
But George Osborne was by no means content to
remain a simple seaman. Between two of his voyages
he spent four months at Boston, studying navigation
at the Nautical College there ; and he made such good
use of his opportunities that he received from the
authorities a certificate of qualification as first-officer
of any merchant ship. It was during this period of
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
study that Osborne, Earl, Viscount, and Baron, re-
ceived the following " character " from a riding-
master in whose house he had lodged :
" To whom it may concern. This is to certify
that Mr. George H. Osborne has lived in my
house for the past four months, and I can most
cheerfully recommend him as a young man of
good habits and kind disposition. F. E. PEAR-
SON."
One can almost see his lordship's quiet smile as he
pocketed this testimonial to his virtues.
Of the Earl's simple tastes and kindly disposition
at the time, a carpenter friend, called Green, supplies
the following particulars : " He was very fond of read-
ing and of music. He used to play very often on the
piano in my house. He was very good to children.
My wife had a little sister who was often in the house,
and George used to take a great deal of notice of her,
and would often buy her little presents."
So thrifty, too, was he that out of his small earnings
he religiously set apart a portion for a " nest-egg,"
which in time amounted to fifty dollars. Once, how-
ever, he yielded to the temptation to draw two cheques,
for ;ioo each, on his Scottish bankers a weakness
which he thus deplored to his mother : " I have never
had any self-respect since I found means to get that
money. I have never had any pleasure in life since.
90
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
I despise myself for my foolish weakness. I shall
never again hold up my head."
His letters to his mother, whom he loved passion-
ately, are full of revelations of a sweet nature. A
fear runs through them that he may never see her
again. " How many times," he writes, " has this
thought come to me in the dark and cheerless night
watches ; but I have to drive it from me as too dread-
ful to think of. I wonder where you are now, and
what are you doing? I know you are doing some
good, and that you are a blessing to all around you."
Those home letters record strange adventures and
more than one narrow escape from death ; as when the
vessel he was in, " deeply loaded and very leaky,"
water-logged till she lay over on her beam-ends,
struggled for seventeen hours in a raging sea,
threatening every moment to founder. When he
thought his last hour had come, " God, in His mercy,"
intervened for his safety. And through all these
periods of stress and danger his one thought was for
his distant mother, to whom he sends his " never-dying
love."
So obsessed was he with the terrible fear that he
would never see her again, that after three years of
seafaring life he decided to return to Scotland, to re-
sume his rank and its duties. One more voyage he
would make this time in the Hera from Boston to
9*
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Melbourne; and this should be the last. But, alas,
for his dreaming and his hopes ! It proved indeed to
be his last. The Hera set sail from Boston harbour
on the 2 ist January, 1870. Six days later George
Osborne was washed overboard and perished in the
sea.
The story of the tragedy is thus told by the ship's
captain. "We sailed on the 2ist of January. We
had very bad weather indeed ; on the morning of the
27th of January I was alarmed in my cabin by the cry
of ' a man overboard.' I rushed on deck and found
that the man overboard was Osborne. Everything
that my experience could suggest was done to save
him. Ropes and planks were thrown to him. The
boat was cleared away ; but it was impossible to launch
her. The waves were very high.
" I saw Osborne struggling in the water. I heard
him cry out; but the cries soon ceased. The water
was very cold, and even a good swimmer must have
perished very soon."
The second mate of the Hera gives an account of
the earlier stages of this catastrophe. " We were
lowering the mainsail," he says. " Osborne and I
were side by side, hauling on the same rope. I was
between him and the sea. The ship gave a heavy
roll ; the downhaul got taut. Osborne and I were
both caught in the bight of the downhaul. The first
92
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
shock came on him, because he was nearer the sail
than I. I had time to lay myself down, and the rope
passed over me, while Osborne was dragged across me
and into the sea. It was the work of a second."
Thus perished, in the prime of his days, one of the
truest gentlemen who have ever graced the British
Peerage. His fears had proved only too true; for
never on earth should he see again the mother he
loved so deeply, and who was left to carry a broken
heart to the grave. And thus it was that forty years
and more ago the Aberdeen coronet came to the dead
sailor's brother, John Campbell Gordon, seventh Earl
of his line, who to-day rules Ireland as the King's
Lieutenant.
CHAPTER X
A BELLE OF THE RESTORATION
As Cardinal Mazarin looked smilingly on at the romps
of his five lovely nieces with their Royal playmates,
the boy-King, Louis XIV., and his brother, Philippe
d'Orleans, even his shrewd, far-seeing eyes could
scarcely have foreseen the strangely romantic roles
they were destined to play on the stage of the world.
It was from no impulse of affection that the " Italian
adventurer, ' ' then at the zenith of his power as virtual
ruler of France and avowed lover of Anne of Austria,
mother of his youthful Sovereign, offered a home to
the five daughters and the son of his sister, Hieronima
Mancini. His nieces were, by common consent, the
loveliest children in Europe; and his design was to
secure by their beauty, supplemented by his gold, such
splendid alliances as would make his position as the
most powerful minister in Europe impregnable.
He had not calculated, however, on the price he
would have to pay for realising this ambition. From
the day when his beautiful nieces woke the slumbers
of the Palais Mazarin with their romps and shrieks of
laughter he knew no peace. Wild and untrammelled
94
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
as young colts, they defied his authority and shocked
him by their escapades. They scoffed at his religion;
and while the sisters refused point blank even to hear
the Mass, in spite of his pleading, " If you won't hear
it for God's sake, at least hear it for the world's," his
nephew horrified him, one Good Friday, by celebrat-
ing Mass over a pig, an outrage which cost him a large
slice of his uncle's fortune.
Thus the little madcaps grew up in the splendid
environment of the Palais Mazarin to a ravishingly
beautiful young womanhood, the toast of every gallant
in Europe, and coveted prizes to a small army of Royal
Princes and nobles. If they had for some years
proved a terrible thorn in the Cardinal's bed of roses,
he had at least no difficulty in finding high-placed
husbands for them, such as his ambition desired.
Laure, the eldest of the quintette, and the only one
against whom scandal never pointed a finger, was
wedded to a grandson of Henri IV. Marie Anne, the
youngest, blossomed into the Duchesse de Bouillon.
Olympe might have been Queen of France if Anne of
Austria had not so resolutely put her foot down on her
son's dallying; she soon found solace, however, in the
arms of the Comte de Soissons, a cadet of the Royal
House of Savoy; only, in later years, to lead a
scandalous and vagrant life in almost every country in
Europe. And Marie, in her turn, was compelled to
95
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
turn her back on the love-sick Louis and the throne of
France, to find a husband in the Constable Colonna, as
a preliminary to a life of strange adventure and equal
scandal.
Of all his lovely nieces, Hortense was the only one
who really captured the heart of the Cardinal ; for, not
only was she the most beautiful of the Mancini sisters,
but she had a fascination and power of heart-conquest
which none of them could boast. So effectually did
she enslave her uncle that her lightest word was law
to him. e< I can twist him round my little finger,
comme fa," she used laughingly to boast. As for
lovers, she drew them as irresistibly (and as dis-
astrously) as flame attracts moths. Our own Charles
II., then an exile, burned his wings badly at the flame
of Hortense's beauty. Twice he offered her his hand,
and a share of the splendid future which he knew
awaited him; and twice the Cardinal sent him packing.
Other high-placed lovers, the Prince (afterwards
King) of Portugal, the Duke of Savoy, the great
Turenne, and many another, met with similar rebuffs
from the haughty beauty or her scheming uncle.
After declining such splendid alliances as these,
Europe learned with amazement that the prize of her
beauty and her colossal fortune had fallen to Armand
de la Porte de la Meilleraye, son of the brilliant
Marshal of that name a man of high family, it is true,
9 6
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
but scarcely a fit successor to the Royal wooers to
whom she had turned a cold shoulder. With his bride
Meilleraye secured a dowry of thirty million francs and
the title of Due de Mazarin. His wedding gift to his
wife was a cabinet containing ten thousand pistoles of
gold; a present of which Hortense thought so little that
she left the cabinet open for all who would to help
themselves; and when the coins did not go as rapidly
as she wished she flung them in handfuls out of the
palace windows, and shrieked with laughter at the
scrambles of the crowd to secure them.
Eight days later the Cardinal drew his last breath;
and Hortense, who was awaiting the end, with her
sisters, in an adjoining room, joined heartily in their
exclamation, " God be thanked, the Cardinal's
gone! " Such was the gratitude that crowned
Mazarin 's ambitious designs for his nieces!
Hortense had not been many days a wife before she
would gladly have given all her gold for her lost free-
dom, for her husband, the Due, was quick to reveal
his true character that of a bigoted, madly jealous
man, with eccentricities bordering on insanity. So
puritanical was he that one of his first acts was to deface
every picture in the Palais Mazarin, and to destroy
with a hammer every statue that offended his sense of
decency. His jealousy of his wife's dazzling beauty
took every form of cruelty the ingenuity of a disordered
97
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
brain could devise. He dismissed her servants; raged
at all her little vanities; and, lest he should lose sight
of her, would drag her about with him in all sorts of
weather, " compelling her to sleep in peasants' huts
or to lodge with him in lonely castles." He squan-
dered her fortune, seized her jewels, and generally
treated her with such barbarity that, after seven years
of " hell on earth " (as she described her life with
him) , she was compelled to escape to the protection of
her brother, the Due de Nevers.
Then, for some years, ensued a life of such strange
vicissitudes as has seldom fallen to the lot of woman
an unhappy period, which can only be lightly out-
lined in this sketch. Her first flight came to a speedy
end when she was arrested and imprisoned in the Con-
vent of Les Filles de St. Marie, an aristocratic home
for women of evil repute. Here she played such
pranks, by " filling the nuns' holy water stoup with
ink, putting wet sheets on their beds, letting dogs loose
in their dormitory," and by similar practical jokes,
that the Abbess, in despair, begged to be relieved of
so troublesome a charge; and she was transferred to
another convent prison.
Then once more we find her in flight this time in
man's clothes, accompanied by a maid, similarly
attired, and two men-servants. Thus disguised she
wandered through Switzerland and Italy, encountering
9 8
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
many a strange adventure by the way, and reduced to
such straits that she was obliged to pawn the few
articles of jewellery she had been able to take with
her. Now she is back again in France entreating
Louis to protect her from her husband an appeal
which resulted in an arrangement by which she was to
enjoy an allowance of 24,000 francs a year, so long as
she remained out of the country a sum of which a
cynical courtier remarked, " she will eat it at the first
inn she comes to! "
Back again in Italy, on her " beggarly allowance,"
we see the Duchesse embarking on a fresh series of
escapades and adventures; this time with her sister,
Mme. la Connetable, who, in turn, is running away
from her husband. The two runaways, both in male
attire, reach Marseilles in a small boat, after facing
death in a terrible storm, and after a narrow escape
from capture by Turkish pirates. With two chevaliers
for escort they wander through Provence, until the
approach of the Due de Mazarin's police agents so
alarms the Duchesse that she abandons her sister and
flies to the arms of one of her old suitors, the Duke
of Savoy, under whose protection she remains for three
years, secure from her husband's pursuit and revelling
once more in the luxury she loved.
With the death of her ducal lover and protector it
became necessary to look for a new asylum; and her
99
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
eyes turned to England and to the most ardent wooer of
her girlish days, Charles II., now well established on
his recovered throne. And one December day in 1675
the Duchesse, still young and more radiantly beautiful
than ever, made her appearance at the Court of White-
hall, to be received with open arms by the amorous
King whose offer of a crown she had spurned in his
days of exile. Of her beauty at this time Forneron
painted a glowing picture: " The glory and in-
describable sweetness of her eyes, which ' looked as if
they had basked in love's sunshine '; the exquisite
curves of her lips; the luxuriant beauty of the jet-black
hair which rose in waves to crown her daintily-poised
head; the purity and freshness of her complexion; the
grace of a figure, every motion of which was a poem."
To her physical charms, invested as they were with
the halo of his early romance, the Merry Monarch
succumbed at once, the most willing of victims. He
installed the vagrant Beauty in the most sumptuous
apartments in St. James's Palace, and dowered her
with a pension of 4,000 a year. By a leap she took
her place as queen of his harem, dethroning that arch-
intrigante, the Duchess of Portsmouth, to the delight
of Protestant England, who to a man detested and
feared the lovely " French spy "; while Louis, eager
to ingratiate himself with Charles's new favourite,
compelled her husband, the Due, to allow her 50,000
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
a year, and to return to her the jewels, laces, and other
precious belongings of which he had robbed her.
Thus, from her long years of eclipse and persecu-
tion, Duchesse Hortense emerged into a splendid
queendom in a strange land. For political power she
cared not a straw; she was content to drink long and
deep of the cup of pleasure and licence which Fortune
now held so seductively to her lips. Her Royal lover
was her infatuated slave; he showered gold and costly
presents on her; dazzled her eyes with coronets which
she declined to accept; and even turned a blind eye
to her many intrigues with his rivals, notably with the
dashing and handsome Prince of Monaco, who had the
audacity to make love to her under his very eyes. She
drew to her salon all the men of culture and wit in
England, from the adoring St. Evremond to the poet
Waller; and played to perfection the dual role of
patroness of learning and high priestess of pleasure.
She flung herself with zest into the mania of
gambling which had taken possession of Charles's
Court, and eclipsed even the Duchess of Portsmouth
and my Lady Castlemaine by the prodigal scale of her
stakes at the basset-table, winning or losing thousands
of pounds at a sitting with the same insouciant smile.
Thus the gay, pleasure-pursuing years flitted by, as
powerless to touch her radiant beauty as to shake the
throne of her supremacy. Even when her fortieth
101
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
birthday was in sight this remarkable woman was still
drawing all the gallants to her feet; among them the
Baron Banier, a handsome young Swede barely out
of his 'teens, and her equally youthful nephew, the
Chevalier de Soissons, son of her sister Olympe. So
fierce was the jealousy between these boys that, for her
beaux yeux, they fought a duel in which the Baron was
run through the heart.
" I could not have believed it possible," says
Madame de Sevigne, " that the eyes of a grandmother
could have wrought such havoc." Mme. de Mazarin
was so shocked by this tragedy that " she closed her
house, hung her salon in black, and saw nobody but
the ever faithful St. Evremond." But the unnatural
passion of a nephew and the slaying of a lover young
enough to be her son were, after all, mere incidents in
the career of such a profligate. She quickly emerged
from her crape-hung boudoir to plunge again into the
vortex of dissipation. To gambling she now added an
invincible appetite for whiskey, and spent the last years
of her King-lover's life in an unbroken orgy of dissipa-
tion.
With Charles's death her day of queendom naturally
came to an end. She shed a few tears over her fallen
greatness, but speedily wiped them away to resume her
life of sensual indulgence under two more Kings, from
each of whom she drew a substantial pension. She
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
varied her amours by the feverish joys of the card-table
and the patronage of the racecourse; and it was only
when she saw death looming near that she at last retired
from the scenes of her splendour and her shame to
spend a few months in mock penitence and preparation
for the end in Chelsea. Here, one summer day in
1699, sne closed her eyes on the world in which, for
fifty-two years, she had played so many romantic parts.
But even with her death the chapter of her adven-
tures was not closed. She had not drawn her last
breath many hours before her body was seized by a
horde of clamorous creditors, and held in pawn until
her husband had paid the last farthing of her load of
debts, and was able to remove it across the Channel.
" For over a year," says St. Simon, " M. de Mazarin
carried her body about with him from one estate to
another. Once he suffered it to rest for a short time
in the Church of Notre Dame de Liesse, where the
peasants treated it as that of a saint, and touched it
with their beads. At last he took it to Paris, and
buried it beside her famous uncle, the Cardinal, in the
church of the ' College des Quatre Nations.' "
103
CHAPTER XI
AN INFAMOUS BROTHERHOOD
You may search England through, and not find a scene
fairer to look upon than that which spreads its beauties
by the River Thames between Henley and Marlow
where the village of Medmenham has its setting in rich
meadow-lands and green trees, a haunt of peace and
rural charm, remote from the stress and strife of man.
We cannot wonder that when the Cistercian monks
first set eyes on this beauty spot, in the far-away days
when King John was wearing his crown, they decided
to raise there an abbey which should rival in grandeur
their House of Woburn, in Bedfordshire; and before
John took up his pen to place his reluctant signature
on the Great Charter, the towering walls of the new
Abbey of Medmenham were mirrored in the silver of
the river that flowed, deep and placid, at its feet.
Here for long centuries succeeding generations of
monks and abbots recited their Matins, Lauds, and
Vespers, and the Angelus bell drew the thoughts of
all within its sound to better things. But this long
day of peace and worship, in an environment of Nature
at her loveliest, came to an end when the fiat went forth
104
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
that monasteries were to be swept away. Indeed, long
before this, the Medmenham Abbey had fallen on days
of poverty; and when the end came only two monks
were left to pace its cloisters and recite its litanies, and,
we are told, " the house was almost in ruins, its income
was a little over ,20 a year, and the value of its move-
able goods was a paltry i 33. 8d." To such straits
had the proud abbey fallen in the days of Henry VIII.
Shorn of its grandeur, and left to the merciless hand
of time, the abbey quickly fell into hopeless decay.
One after another its lofty walls crashed to the earth,
until one of its many successive owners restored it to
some semblance of its old-time beauty by building " a
tower, cloister, and other parts " in close imitation of
the original structure. " Within the cloister," we
learn, from a contemporary writer, " a room has been
fitted up with the same good taste; and the glare of
light is judiciously excluded by the pleasing gloom of
ancient stained glass, chiefly coronets, roses, and port-
cullises. The figure of the Virgin seated on a throne,
and holding the Infant Saviour in her arms, carved in
marble, still remains, and is placed in a niche in the
tower."
Such was the restored Cistercian Abbey of Med-
menham in the days of George III., when Sir Francis
Dashwood first cast his evil eyes on it; and the idea
occurred to him to make it once more a scene of wor-
105
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
ship a " worship " this time so obscene, so unspeak-
able, that it has covered his name with infamy for ever;
and the memory of which makes one blush to-day for
a humanity that could sink to such depths of abomina-
tion.
Sir Francis Dashwood, the villain of this drama, was
a scion of a family that had long been seated on its
broad lands in Dorsetshire. His grandfather had
amassed a large fortune as a Turkey merchant in
London City; his father had blossomed into a country
squire, with a seat in Parliament, the husband of four
wives, of whom two were daughters of Earls. A
Baronetcy was the fitting reward of his political
labours; and one of his four wives, Lady Mary Fane,
brought a Barony, that of Le Despencer, into the
Dashwood family as part of her dower.
In 1708 Lady Mary gave a son to her husband the
Francis of our story, who grew up to clever manhood,
went in his turn to Westminster, and through succes-
sive offices graduated as Chancellor of the Exchequer.
There can be no question of Francis Dashwood's
abilities. He was statesman and orator, scholar and
courtier a man whose gifts were commensurate with
any ambition, however great; and to his many dignities
he added that of Baron Le Despencer, to which he
succeeded on his mother's death.
But to this dazzling shield there was another and
106
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
very different side. As a youth there were few vices
which Francis Dashwood had not explored; as a man
he was a pastmaster in all the arts of profligacy. None
gambled more recklessly than he at the card-table, or
with such a splendid indifference alike to gain or losses;
he was the acknowledged King of the Macaronis of
his day, and with his beribboned and beflowered hat,
his flowing ringlets, his spying-glass and his nosegay,
was the biggest swaggerer who ever entered the doors
of Almack's or Brooks's Club. He knew every haunt
of vice in London, and was prouder of his amours and
his three-bottle capacity than of his political fame.
Such was Francis Dashwood, the most notorious
roue and blackguard of his day
Untainted with one deed of real worth,
Lothario holding honour at no price,
Folly to folly added, vice to vice
when his name became associated with the Thames-
side abbey, to his greatest shame.
To Dashwood's depraved taste this peaceful spot,
so far removed from the prying eyes of men, suggested
itself at once as an ideal resort for the indulgence of
his debased conceptions of pleasure. He had long
exhausted all the vicious possibilities of London.
Here, with fresh appetite, he could take a new lease
of vice with little fear that his excesses would come
107
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
to the ears of the public, whom he at once despised and
courted.
Nor was there any lack of kindred spirits in that age
of licence. He need not, indeed, go outside the circle
of his intimate friends to find all the colleagues he
required for his new enterprise.
There was George Selwyn, for instance just the
man for his purpose, who, in the gratification of his
tastes feared neither God nor his fellow-man. He had
proved this as a youth when he was " kicked " with
ignominy out of his Oxford college a story which
Horace Walpole tells thus:
" It appears that Selwyn had obtained possession
of a silver chalice used for the Communion Service,
and that while at a tavern, surrounded by a jovial party
of friends, he once filled it with wine and handed it
round, exclaiming with mock gravity, ' Drink this in
remembrance of me.' It was for this infamous out-
rage on elementary decency that Selwyn had been sent
down from Oxford in disgrace, to be treated in London
as a hero and martyr by men as shameless as himself."
Then there was my Lord Sandwich, a brother states-
man of Dashwood, a man who was described as
Too infamous to have a friend,
Too bad for bad men to commend.
Potter, son of the Archbishop of Canterbury, was
the third of this Comus crew, a man who had nothing
108
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
to learn, even from Dashwood, of the arts of vice.
Other members were Wilkes, M.P., and one of the
cleverest scoundrels in London; the poet Churchill,
Whitehead, and Lloyd, and others of the same kidney
to the number of a dozen.
These were the men (if one can call them " men ")
who leagued themselves with Dashwood in a new
brotherhood to revive the splendour of Medmenham
by worshipping the Devil! " Franciscan " monks
they dubbed themselves, in honour of Francis, their
founder and high priest; and to the restored cloister of
Medmenham Abbey they made their pilgrimages to
conduct their shameless rites under the eyes of the
throned Virgin.
Precisely what these rites were we do not know. It
was not long, however, before it began to be whispered
in the taverns and coffee-houses of London that Med-
menham was the scene of orgies more shameless than
even those over which the " Regent Roue," the Due
d'Orleans, presided at his Pare aux Cerfs. There
were curious eyes in Medmenham village; and strange
tales began to circulate of the scenes they had
witnessed through the lighted windows of the cloister-
room on dark nights scenes (some of them) too
horrible to raise even a corner of the curtain on. These
orgies were rarely witnessed except on two nights of
the week, when the " noble order of Franciscans "
109
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
deserted town on Saturday to pass the week-end as
" cloistered monks " by the riverside. Much un-
savoury light is thrown on these orgies in a contem-
porary book, " Chrysal, or the Adventures of a
Guinea "; and Wilkes, whose tongue was as indiscreet
and unrestrained as his pen, has added the testimony
of one who shared them.
" Rites," he told Lord Temple, " were celebrated
there of a nature subversive of all decency, and calcu-
lated, by an imitation of the ceremonies and mysteries
of the Roman Catholic Church, to render not only that
Church, but religion itself, an object of contumely.
To such an extent, I will own, that they cannot be
reflected on without astonishment. Sir Francis Dash-
wood himself used to officiate as high priest habited in
the dress of a Franciscan monk of the olden days, and
engaged in pouring a libation from a Communion cup
to the mysterious object of the homage of himself and
his associates.'*
The Messe Noire, or Black Mass, appears to have
played an important part in these celebrations; and in
this connection the following story is told by the author
of " Tarnished Coronets ": " During the celebra-
tion of the Messe Noire, Sandwich had to speak an
invocation to the Devil. At the psychic moment, we
are told by the author of ' Chrysal,' Wilkes let loose
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
a black baboon adorned with the traditional insignia
of horns and hoofs.
" The animal vaulted on to the table, and then,
gibbering with fright, took refuge on Sandwich's
shoulders. That worthy monk, who, of course, had
a superstitious belief in the powers he was flouting,
rolled on the ground in a paroxysm of craven fear,
imagining that, like a second Faustus, he would be
carried off to the infernal regions. With frenzy he
implored the ' gracious devil ' to return whence he had
come, until a roar of laughter from a fellow reveller
discovered the intruder to be only a baboon."
Sandwich never forgave the practical joker. And
when Wilkes was on his trial for seditious libel his
opportunity for revenge came. Some years earlier,
for the delectation of the Franciscans, a scandalous
poem, entitled an " Essay on Woman," had been
written in parody of Pope's famous " Essay on Man,"
and this poem Sandwich insisted on reading to a
scandalised House of Lords, declaring that Wilkes was
both author and publisher of it. The Peers declared
that the parody was " obscene, libellous, and a breach
of privilege "; and a few days later Wilkes was
indicted for blasphemy. Such was the shameless
betrayal of one Medmenham monk by another.
It is as inconceivable in our time that statesmen
should find their pleasure in ways so disgraceful, as
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
that public opinion should tolerate for a day the orgies
of the Franciscan monks. But strange as it seems,
not one of the infamous crew, from Dash wood to " Old
Q." (the infamous Duke of Queensberry) and Fox,
Lord Holland, who were later members of the
fraternity, seems to have suffered much in reputation
or at all in position by conduct which should make a
cannibal blush for them.
Dashwood survived to see his seventy-third birth-
day, and to wear his coronet as Lord "Le Despencer"
for nearly twenty years before his shameless eyes were
closed in death. His later years, when the fires of
passion had burnt themselves out, seem to have been
spent in retirement let us hope, also in penitence.
His fame and shame alike appear to have been for-
gotten, for not a contemporary line survives to
chronicle his death.
Abbot and monks have long been dust. Of Dash-
wood, as of others of the brotherhood, a tainted
memory alone remains. But the abbey which they so
foully desecrated sleeps sweetly still in its ruins; and
all the infamies of the blasphemers have been power-
less to leave the least stain on the fairness of its fame.
112
FRANCES JENNINGS
DUCHESS OF TYRCONNEL
CHAPTER XII
THE DUCHESS IN THE WHITE MASK
AMONG the many keepers of stalls in the New
Exchange in the Strand, a favourite haunt of fashion-
able shoppers when William III. was King, were two
women, one in the pride of youth, the other in the
decline of her days, who for different reasons attracted
much curiosity. The former, who dispensed her
wares under the sign of the Three Spanish Gipsies,
the grand-daughter of a farrier in the Savoy, was a girl
of rare beauty and charm of manner, who was destined,
although she little dreamt it in those days, to die
Duchess of Albemarle. The latter actually was a
Duchess, and but a few years earlier had held her head
proudly among the highest and fairest as the most
lovely of Ireland's Vicereines.
" Above-stairs," says Horace Walpole, " in the
character of a milliner, sat the reduced Duchess of
Tyrconnel, wife of Richard Talbot, Lord Deputy of
Ireland under James II. She had delicacy enough
not to wish to be detected; she sat in a white mask
and a white dress, and was known by the name of the
' White Milliner.' Probably none of the fine ladies
"3
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
who purchased trifles at her stall had any suspicion
that the mysterious saleswoman had been in other days
the most courted beauty in England vainly wooed by
two Kings and Deputy Queen of Ireland."
Little more than fifty years earlier, the Duchess-
milliner had opened her eyes on the world in which
she was to play such a romantic and tragic role at
Sandridge, near St. Albans. She was the daughter
of a plain, jovial, fox-hunting country squire, Richard
Jennings, the head of a family which had been seated
for generations on its broad Hertfordshire acres, and
had been content to lead the life of country gentlefolk,
taking little interest in the doings of the world that
wagged outside its manor boundaries.
Richard's grandfather had, it is true, been dubbed
Knight by the first Charles, had been Sheriff of his
county, and had ridden to the Parliament House at
Westminster for a few years as a law-maker. But,
apart from Sir John, no Jennings had troubled his head
with other concerns than the management of his estates
and his family; and Squire Richard would have
laughed aloud if he had been told that the two baby-
girls in his nursery were one day to wear the coronets
of Duchesses, one as her Grace of Marlborough, the
other as Duchess of Tyrconnel. And yet such were
the surprises Fortune had in waiting for the Jennings
babies.
114
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Both girls grew up " in beauty, side by side "; and
almost before they had emerged from short frocks their
loveliness was the talk of the countryside. Each in
her different way was an exquisite flower of girlhood;
but, of the two, Frances was by common consent the
more lovely; and before she had laid down her school-
books she was the toast of every young squire in the
county, and counted her lovers by the score.
Her fame even travelled as far as the Royal Court
in London; and one day the household at Sandridge
was thrown into a high state of excitement by
the appearance of a gaily-attired functionary, com-
manded by the Duchess of York, whose ambition it
was to surround herself with the prettiest girls in Eng-
land, to invite Frances Jennings to become one of her
Maids of Honour. The bait was a dazzling one.
With much misgiving, Squire Jennings gave his sanc-
tion, and Frances was translated to the gilded circle
that fluttered round one of the most brilliant thrones
in Europe.
To the squire's daughter, reared in the innocence
and simplicity of the country, the change was a
dazzling revolution in her life. To find herself thus
suddenly moving among the fairest and highest in the
land, and received among them with the instantaneous
and universal homage her great beauty commanded,
was calculated to turn the head of any rustic maiden.
"5
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
But Frances' pretty head was not easily turned. She
accepted the homage as her due, and moved among
her new splendours as if she had been cradled in a
palace.
She coquetted with the Court gallants, and drove
them to distraction by her charms and her caprices.
The Duke of York himself lost his heart at sight of her,
and turned on her the battery of his sighs and smiles,
his ogling, and flattering speeches. When she met
his advances with alternate coolness and coquetry, her
indifference only added fuel to the flame of his passion.
He bombarded her with notes, " containing the
tenderest expressions and most magnificent promises,"
slipping them into her pocket or her muff, as oppor-
tunity served; but the disdainful beauty dropped the
billets-doux on the floor for anyone to read who chose
to pick them up, until at last the Royal lover was com-
pelled to abandon the pursuit in despair.
Much more dangerous were the advances of James's
brother, the " Merrie Monarch," a man versed in all
the arts of gallantry and conquest, and, moreover, one
of the most fascinating men in England. Charles,
undeterred by his brother's ignominious defeat, laid
siege to the " lovely Jennings' " heart; and it might
(who can say?) have gone ill for the fair citadel had
not his imperious and beautiful mistress put her foot
116
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
down firmly, and bidden the King to choose between
her and the Maid of Honour.
Among Frances' army of high-placed wooers was
Henry, Marquis de Berny, the future head of one of
the proudest families of France, who was her abject
slave, and vowed that he would kill himself if she did
not smile on his suit. He was saved from this grim
alternative by his summary recall home by his father;
but to his last day he never got over his boyish infatua-
tion. Henry Jermyn, the wealthiest and handsomest
beau in England, offered his hand, gilded with
^20,000 a year, to the bewitching Maid of Honour;
and when she refused it, he rode away to seek death
in New Guinea.
To one and all of her legion of lovers Frances turned
her pretty shoulder. She revelled in her freedom and
the sovereignty of her beauty; she would be no man's
wife yet awhile and certainly no man's mistress,
though he were of the Blood Royal. Of all the maids
at Court she was the maddest and merriest, as she was
the fairest. She was always ready for any escapade,
however foolish and risky; and always was the ring-
leader in it. The chronicles of the time are full of her
pranks.
" What mad freaks the Maids of Honour at Court
have! " writes Pepys in his Diary. " Mrs. Jennings,
one of the Duchess's maids, the other day dressed her-
117
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
self as an orange-wench, and went up and down and
cried ' Oranges '; till, falling down, or by some acci-
dent, her fine shoes were discerned and she put to a
great deal of shame; that such as these tricks, being
ordinary, and worse among them, there be few will
venture on them as wives; my Lady Castlemaine will,
in merriment say that her daughter, now above a year
old or two, will be the first maid in the Court that will
be married."
But the genial diarist is too sweeping in his judg-
ment. Frances Jennings was a madcap, it is true;
but no breath of suspicion ever tarnished her fair fame.
Her virtue was as impregnable as her beauty was un-
rivalled, although in her love of adventure she
certainly ran grave risks. On one occasion she and
another impish Maid of Honour, each suitably attired
and carrying a basket of oranges, took a hackney coach
and drove off in search of fun. As the coach rattled
past the Duke's Theatre, where the Queen and the
Duchess of York were among the audience, the mad-
caps pulled it up, and, basket on arm, entered the
theatre intending to call their wares under the very
noses of their august mistresses.
As ill-luck would have it, however, no sooner had
they set foot in the lobby than Killigrew, a notorious
rake, accosted them, and, putting his arm round
Frances' waist, tried to snatch a kiss. With a scream
118
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
she wrenched herself free, gave the roue a sound box
on the ear, and, with her companion, rushed back to
the coach, bidding the driver take them to the house
of a famous necromancer to have their fortunes told.
Of the further adventures that befell them there is no
room to tell, but before they found themselves safely
at Court again they had had experiences to satisfy them
for many a week to come.
But among such a shower of Cupid's darts as assailed
her even Frances Jennings could scarcely hope to go
untouched; and the first sign of danger came at her
meeting with Dick Talbot, a dashing, adventurous
Irishman, with the finest physique and handsomest face
in England.
Talbot was a man whom any maid, however impreg-
nable she might think herself, might well have found
irresistible. Apart from his physical perfections, he
had won a European reputation by his adventures and
deeds of daring; he was the ideal hero of romance, and
a born courtier and lover to boot. Before a wooer so
ardent and so invested with romance Frances
Jennings' heart succumbed; and, with the approval
and smiles of her Royal mistress, she became affianced
to him. But before she had been a promised bride
many months her proud spirit rebelled against the
chains of a lover who proved too autocratic to please
her, and in a moment of mutiny she tore them off.
119
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
As so often happens to such wayward and wilful
maidens, her heart was before long caught on the re-
bound by a pertinacious wooer for whom she did not
profess any affection George Hamilton, a soldierly,
stalwart scion of the Abercorn family, who, through
all her caprices and vagaries, had worshipped patiently
at her shrine since she first left her Hertfordshire
home. She had refused more than one Duchess's
coronet, and had at last bartered her peerless beauty
to become the wife of a plain soldier of fortune.
She was but seventeen when, as a bride, she turned
her back on the splendours of Courts to fare forth with
her soldier-husband to France, where Louis XIV. had
need of his sword. Louis made a Count of the Captain
of his Gens d'Armes Anglais, who, after a few years
of fighting, fell gallantly in battle near Zebernstieg in
1676, leaving his young and beautiful wife, with three
young daughters, penniless, save for a small pension
from France.
But Frances Jennings (or the Countess Hamilton,
as she had now become) was no woman to spend her
days in weeping, or to watch her beauty fade in the
shadow of sorrow and obscurity. She was still young,
and her loveliness had but reached the fulness of its
flower. It was not long before she had laid aside her
mourning, and was captivating the gay world of Paris
under the aegis of the English Ambassador's lady.
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
In the French capital this English rose created as
great a sensation as in London. To quote one of the
many admirers of the fascinating widow, " Nature had
dowered her with inexpressible charms to which the
Graces have put the finishing touches; she has the
figure of Aurora, or of the Goddess of Spring."
It was in Paris, in these days of reincarnation, as she
called them, that her former lover, handsome Dick
Talbot, crossed her path again. Like herself, Talbot
had made a pilgrimage to the altar, and was again free
to woo and wed; and this time there was no rift within
the lute. Her heart had always been his, and when
he claimed it the surrender was immediate and final.
As the wife of Colonel Talbot she entered on the
happiest period of her chequered life.
When her husband, who was a prime favourite with
James II., was sent to Ireland, with an Earldom to
gild him, to take charge of the troops there, his
Countess went with him. A few years later " my
lord " was created, by his indulgent Sovereign, Duke
of Tyrconnel, and appointed Lord Deputy of Ireland.
Thus, by devious and obscure paths, Frances
Jennings had at last reached the goal of her ambition;
she was a Duchess. Nay, more, she was, as the
Viceroy's lady, a Queen, with a Court of her own.
These were splendid days for the squire's daughter
days in which she drank deep of the cup of pleasure
121
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and of power; and she filled her exalted position with
a dignity, tact, and graciousness as conspicuous as her
beauty. She won all hearts, and commanded all
homage at a time when the Stuart fortunes were beset
with dangers and difficulties. Even when the flood
of disaster overwhelmed her Sovereign, and when he
rode, desperate and ruined, from the fatal field of the
Boyne, she was almost the only one of his adherents
who kept a cool and exalted head. She received the
dishevelled Royal fugitive at Dublin Castle with all
the splendour and honours of a Queen receiving an
Emperor. She knew that her sun had set; but at
least it should set in flame and glory.
A little later, she was an exile in France with her
King. Her splendours had fallen from her; but her
proud heart was unsubdued. To husband and King
alike she was a tower of strength. But evil fate
dogged her still and to the last. Her husband re-
turned to Ireland, in 1691, to challenge the Orange
King's supremacy once more. Never had he been
more buoyant and more brilliant than when, one
August day, he dined with D'Usson and a few kindred
souls. " He drank, he jested; he was again the Dick
Talbot who had dined and revelled with Grammont."
As he rose, with laughter on his lips, from the table he
was struck with apoplexy. Three days later he died;
122
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and his body was laid to rest, unmarked by stone or
epitaph, under the pavement of Limerick Cathedral.
The rest of Frances Jennings' remarkable life-story
can be told in a few words. For some years poverty
of a grim type was her daily companion. Her beauty
faded until no trace of it was left. Her three
daughters by Hamilton, for each of whom she had
found a Viscount for husband, were estranged from
her. For a time, as we have seen, she was thankful
to keep body and soul together by selling her wares in
the New Exchange, hiding her pride and identity in a
white mask. At last her brother-in-law, the Duke of
Marlborough, came tardily to her rescue; and through
his influence a small part of her husband's Irish pro-
perty was restored to her. Thus rescued from priva-
tion, she spent the last thirty years of her life in Dublin,
living unregarded where she had once reigned as
Queen.
And her death was as pitiful as the clouded close of
her life. One cold winter night in 1731 she fell out
of bed on to the floor, " and being too feeble to rise
or call out, she was found in the morning so perished
with cold that she died in a few hours." Thus died
in loneliness and tragedy one of the most brilliant
women who have ever dazzled men's eyes by their
beauty, or have climbed to dizzy heights on the ladder
of ambition.
"3
CHAPTER XIII
A BEAUTIFUL SHREW
THE Kit Cat Club, that famous club of Whig patriots
which held its convivial meetings over Christopher
Kat's pastrycook shop, within a biscuit throw of
Temple Bar, some two centuries ago, had many a
proud name on its roster of members from the great
Maryborough and bluff Sir Robert Walpole to Steele
and Addison, Congreve and Dryden; but none quite
so remarkable as that of Mary Pierrepoint, famous in
later years as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the
eccentric beauty and wit who wrote the most charming
letters ever penned by human hand.
It was the invariable law of the Kit Cat Club that
at each merry meeting a special toast should be given
in honour of some lady of beauty or fame; and one
evening in the year 1698 this honour fell to Evelyn
Pierrepoint, who was in later years to blossom into His
Grace of Kingston. " My daughter Mary," was Mr.
Pierrepoint's choice, to the consternation of his fellow-
members, not one of whom had set eyes on the lady
who was to be thus highly honoured.
" You have not seen my daughter, gentlemen,"
124
LADY MARY WORTLEY MONTAGU
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Mr. Pierrepoint said; " but I will send for her, and
you shall see for yourselves that, young as she is, she
is a lady worthy of your homage." Half-an-hour
later the " toast " of the evening, a child of eight, who
had been taken from her bed for the purpose, made
her appearance a charming picture in frills and
ribbons and, at sight of her dainty loveliness, made
an immediate conquest. The toast was drunk with
uproarious enthusiasm; the beautiful little maid was
elected a member of the Club with acclamation, and
spent a delightful hour on the knees of great noble-
men and poets before she was carried back, weary but
very happy, to her bed. Thus dramatically did Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu make her curtsey and her first
conquests on the stage of life, on which for so many
years she was to be a conspicuous figure.
Fond as Mary Pierrepoint was of admiration and
petting, she was fonder still of her books; and her
happiest hours, even as a child, were spent in her
father's library, poring over " Ovid " or
" Xenophon " a curious pastime in which she often
had for companion young Edward Wortley, brother
of her great friend Anne Wortley, a studious youth
who still found time to write glowing sonnets to his
fellow student's beauty and wit. In fact, he soon
found it so agreeable to read Latin and Greek with
pretty Mary Pierrepoint that he completely lost his
125
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
heart to her, and began to avow his passion in ardent
prose.
But Lady Mary (as she now was), who by this time
had blossomed into a beautiful and very fascinating
young woman of twenty-one, was little disposed to
allow Cupid to interfere with " Xenophon." She
frankly tells her wooer, " I can esteem, I can be a
friend, but I don't know whether I can love. Expect
what is complaisant and easy, but never what is fond
in me." Such cold response as this chilled the ardour
of Edward Wortley. Reproaches were followed by
hot words; and, in high dudgeon, the young man at
last went off, vowing he would never see her again.
Then it was, as so often happens, that the deserted
girl made a discovery. She knew then that she really
loved the man she had spurned; and she wrote to him,
" While I foolishly fancied you loved me, there is no
condition in life I could not have been happy in with
you so very much I liked you I may say, loved;
since it is the last thing I'll ever say to you.
I'll never see you more. I shall avoid all public
places; and this is the last letter I shall send. If you
write, do not be displeased if I send it back unopened."
To Edward Wortley this sudden thawing of the ice-
berg was a revelation as startling as it was welcome.
An hour after receiving it, he was on his knees before
the girl he loved, and was holding the hand which
126
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
carried a heart with it. But Edward Wortley's
difficulties were by no means at an end. The Marquis
of Dorchester (as Mr. Pierrepoint had become) not
only point-blank refused to accept him as son-in-law,
but vowed that his daughter should forthwith be
married to a man of his own choosing. If she refused,
he would " disown her for ever."
In such a terrible predicament, what could a poor
maiden do ? She dried her tears, and consented to go
to the altar with the man she hated. The wedding-
day was fixed; the bride's trousseau, on which ,400
had been spent, was ready to wear and then, at the
eleventh hour, when even the wedding-guests had
arrived, the bride fled to the arms of Edward Wortley.
The day before she thus vanished, she had written
to him ' ' Reflect now for the last time in what manner
you must take me. I shall come to you only with a
nightgown and petticoat; and that is all you will get
with me. I again beg you to hire a coach to be at
the door early Monday morning to carry us part of our
way wherever you resolve our journey shall be.
I tremble for what we are doing. Are you sure
you will love me for ever? Shall we never repent? "
Ominous words these; for seldom has even a run-
away match proved more disastrous. Edward Wort-
ley, the student-lover, was quick to show his true
character that of "an insufferable prig and the
127
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
meanest of misers "; and before the honeymoon had
waned he began to treat his wife with the neglect and
cruelty which ultimately drove her from him. The
unhappy girl, however, soon found solace and distrac-
tion in a whirl of gaiety. If her husband did not
appreciate her, there were hundreds of gallants to pay
homage to her beauty and her wit; the world of fashion
was eager to hail her as one of its queens.
When her miserly husband, who had now tacked
" Montagu " on to his " Wortley " cognomen, was
made Lord of the Treasury, Lady Mary transferred
her charms and gifts to the Royal Court, where she
soon became a prime favourite. The King and the
Prince of Wales both paid her marked attention; in
fact, His Majesty was always at his best and merriest
when Wortley Montagu's wife was by his side. And
in this connection an amusing story is told.
One day, when she was anxious to keep an appoint-
ment, she slipped away unobserved from the King's
side, and was tripping down the staircase when she
met Secretary Craggs, who was on his way to pay his
respects to His Majesty. " Ha, you little truant!
You are running away? " was the Secretary's greet-
ing; and " snatching her up in his arms, as a nurse
carries a child, he ran full speed with her upstairs,
deposited her within the ante-chamber, kissed both her
hands respectfully, and vanished." There was no
128
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
help for it now ! Lady Mary, covered with confusion,
was ushered by a page once more into the presence
of the King, to whom she told the story of her abduc-
tion, with tears in her eyes.
A moment later in walked Mr. Secretary with pro-
found obeisances, whereupon the King angrily
demanded, " Is it the custom of this country to carry
about fair ladies like a sack of flour? " For a second
Craggs was dumbfounded, never dreaming that Lady
Mary had played the traitress; and then, with a low
bow, said, " There is nothing I would not do for your
Majesty's satisfaction." The King laughed, we are
told; but when Craggs passed Lady Mary, he whis-
pered fiercely in her ear, " You little tell-tale.
I thought you had more sense. I'll pay you out for
this some day! "
When, in 1716, Wortley Montagu was sent to Con-
stantinople on a diplomatic mission his wife accom-
panied him, to spend two years in the gorgeous East,
where none was more gorgeous than herself. She was
more Oriental than the Orientals in her rose-coloured
damask silk trousers, brocaded with silver flowers, her
shoes of gold-embroidered white kid, smock of white
silk gauze edged with embroidery, richly-laced scarlet
waistcoat and blue braided jacket.
Of this sojourn in the East Lady Mary gives many
a sprightly account in her inimitable letters, not the
129
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
least lively of which is the following: " One of the
highest entertainments in Turkey is having you to their
baths; and when I was introduced to one, the lady of
the house came to undress me, which is another high
compliment they pay to strangers. After she had
slipped off my gown and saw my stays, she was much
struck at the sight of them, and cried out to the other
ladies in the bath, ' Come hither and see how cruelly
the poor English ladies are used by their husbands;
you need boast indeed of the superior liberties allowed
you when they lock you up thus in a box! '
It was during this stay in Constantinople that Lady
Mary " first had the thought of a septennial bill for
the benefit of married persons "; and that she began
to advocate the virtues of inoculation for small-pox,
which was commonly practised by the Turks. ' They
make parties," she says, " for this purpose; and when
they are met (commonly fifteen or sixteen together)
the old woman comes with a nutshell full of the matter
of the best sort of small pox, and asks what vein you
please to have opened. She immediately rips open
that you offer to her, with a large needle, and puts
into the vein as much venom as can lie upon
the head of the needle; and afterwards binds
up the little wound with a hollow piece of
stick." But the English doctors jeered at the new-
fangled medical heresy; and England was thus left to
'3
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the ravages of small-pox eighty years longer until
Jenner took up the cudgels for vaccination and at last
conquered a sceptical world.
Back in England again, it was not long before Lady
Mary's scathing pen and contemptuous indifference
made a bitter enemy of Pope, whose infatuation for
her led to an offer of marriage. And never was lover
so humiliated as the " little hunchback/' when, in
passionate words, he laid his heart at his lady's feet.
In spite of her utmost endeavours to be angry and look
grave, Lady Mary burst into an immoderate fit
of laughter, from which moment, we are told, " he
became her implacable enemy." How bitter and re-
morseless this enmity was we all know who have read
the cruel lines in which the poet satirised Lady Mary
as Sappho.
But Lady Mary's " pen of vinegar " and her too
clever and biting tongue constantly estranged friends
and made enemies; and to her last day she seemed
unable to keep either tongue or pen in decent restraint.
One cannot resist a laugh at these exhibitions of her
dangerous sense of humour and her sarcasm; as when
she gravely assured foolish Lady Rich that the Master
of the Rolls is so called " because he superintends all
the French rolls that are baked in London; and with-
out him you would have no bread and butter for break-
fast "; or when she described Lady Orkney as " a
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
mixture of fat and wrinkles, and before, a very con-
siderable protuberance which precedes her "; and
Lady Portland at George III.'s coronation, as "an
Egyptian mummy embroidered over with hiero-
glyphics."
Very clever and amusing, no doubt; but such mis-
directed and spiteful humour makes enemies inevit-
ably, as Lady Mary found to her cost in the days of
her friendless old age, when she in turn became the
butt of gibes and jeers to which she was no longer
able to retaliate effectively.
In 1739, after nearly thirty years of miserable
wedded life, Lady Mary decided to leave her husband;
and for two-and-twenty years she never set foot in
England not indeed until death had loosened her
husband's clutch of his money-bags. The latter years
of this sordid Croesus (he left 1, 350,000 behind him)
were spent " in a wretched hovel lean, unpainted,
and half its nakedness barely shaded with harateen
stretched till it cracks," drinking his daily half-pint of
tokay and gloating over his gold.
Meanwhile, his ill-used wife was wandering aim-
lessly about the Continent, her beauty now only a
memory all that was left to her, her clever pen and
her venomous tongue. Horace Walpole saw her at
Florence in 1 740, when she was barely fifty, and gives
this unlovely account of her. " Lady Mary Wortley
132
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
is here," he writes, " an object of ridicule to the town.
She wears a foul mob-cap that does not cover her
greasy black locks, that hang down never combed or
curled; an old mazarine-blue wrapper that gapes open
and discovers a canvas petticoat. Her face violently
swelled partly covered with plaister, partly with
white paint, which for cheapness she has bought so
coarse that you would not use it to wash a chimney/'
Even Lady Mary herself could not have painted a
more cruel picture of her worst enemy than this of her-
self by Walpole, who in a few words has handed down
to posterity a " settlement in full " of the grudges
he bore her. But, making every allowance for the
exaggerations of a spiteful enemy, one cannot resist a
feeling of pity for this woman, shorn of the last vestige
of beauty, separated from her husband and home, and
abandoned by her friends, dragging out a wretched
existence among strangers to whom she was an object
of ridicule or aversion. Add to these the trouble
caused by her son, a worthless profligate, and eccentric
to the verge of madness; and who is there who can envy
Lady Wortley Montagu her brief reign of splendour
and conquest?
When she returned to England, after her husband's
death, in 1761, her own days were drawing to a tragic
close. Cancer of the breast, that most cruel and pain-
ful of diseases, seized her; and after a few months of
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
indescribable suffering borne with fine courage and
resignation, the brilliant and unhappy daughter of the
Duke of Kingston drew her last breath one August
day in 1762.
CHAPTER XIV
A NOBLE ECCENTRIC
THE British Peerage, like every human flock, has not
only its black sheep, but its eccentrics, whose whimsi-
calities, often verging on madness, provoke either
laughter or pity.
Such a blue-blooded oddity was Jane Elizabeth,
Lady Ellenborough, sister of the ninth Lord Digby,
whose singular career, which came to an end but thirty
years ago, made her for half-a-century the wonder
and laughing-stock of Europe. Among her many
eccentricities was a mania for matrimony. Before
she had been many years wedded to her first lord, and
while still little more than a girl, she eloped with
Prince Schwartzenberg, only to leave him in turn,
within two years, for the arms of a handsome Bavarian,
Baron Vennigen.
In quick succession she transferred her volatile
affection to half-a-dozen other husbands, before she
lost her heart to a Bedouin sheik, who promptly
divorced his Moslem wives and married her. The
remainder of her romantic life she spent roaming the
desert with her Arab lord and his dusky retinue, a
J 35
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Queen of Bedouins, or in her barbaric home just out-
side the gates of Damascus, happier, she declared, in
her semi-savage life than if she were wearing the
coronet of an English Duchess.
Other noble oddities occur readily to the memory
the second Lord Rokeby, whom it pleased to walk
hatless in the pouring rain by the side of his carriage
while his flunkeys rode luxuriously inside; and who
spent most of his days gambolling like a merman in
the sea, and dried himself by racing round and round
his bathing-house, to the alarm of any who chanced
to stray that way. Elwes, the Millionaire miser who,
although no Peer, counted noblemen among his ances-
tors, and himself refused a seat in the House of
Lords who would cheerfully lose thousands at a
sitting at the gaming-table ; while he would sit without
fire and light in order to save coals and candles, or
would feast off a month-old pancake, carried in his
pocket, rather than spend sixpence on a meal at a
cheap restaurant.
These and many others one recalls such as Lady
Hester Stanhope, who, like Lady Ellenborough,
turned her back on civilisation to lead the barbaric
life of the East; the first Earl of Dudley, a prey to
weird fancies, whose habit of speaking his thoughts
aloud was responsible for so many amusing stories;
and the " mad " Duke of Portland, who spent his
136
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
days in his subterranean palace at Welbeck, or dodg-
ing furtively along his corridors and through his park,
fearful lest human eyes should see him.
But among all these freaks of noble humanity few
are quite as interesting as George Hanger, fourth
Lord Coleraine, in the Peerage of Ireland, who cut
such a romantic and, at times, grotesque figure in
the London of a century or more ago. A strange
medley of humanity was my Lord Coleraine scholar
and buffoon, intimate friend of the heir to the Throne
and laughing-stock of the coffee-houses; now moving
splendidly among the most splendid at the Court at
Carlton House, now herding with thieves and out-of-
work highwaymen in the slums of St. Giles; swash-
buckler, deadly duellist, famous bruiser, distinguished
soldier, and coal-dealer, who scoffed at rank and
titles, and vowed he was more in his element riding to
Tyburn with a doomed highwayman in the execution-
cart than hobnobbing with Princes.
His enemies, if he had any, could never point to
George Hanger as a madman; his stoutest champion
could scarcely vow that he was quite sane. He was
an eccentric, a man of strange whims and fancies, a
soldier of fortune and its willing football.
Such was the fourth Lord Coleraine, who opened
his eyes on the world one day in 1751, at his father's
seat in Gloucestershire. Precisely who he was or how
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
he came by his title he used to say he did not know
and that he cared less. In his autobiography he de-
clares that he cannot trace his ancestry beyond his
grandfather, one Sir George; and as for his title, he
accounts for it thus humourously :
" My sister, Miss Anne Hanger, was married to
Hare, Lord Coleraine; but my father was not in the
most distant degree related to his lordship, or con-
nected with him except by that marriage. Lord
Coleraine, however, happening to die at the very nick
of time without issue or heir to his coronet, my father
claimed it, with just as much right as the clerk or
sexton of the parish."
But this was only " George's fun." His family was
highly respectable, boasting a few centuries of credit-
able ancestry; and the title which he inherited was
quite regularly granted to his father while George was
wrestling with his Eutropius at Eton, in 1762.
As a schoolboy the heir-to-be seems to have been a
hopeless " pickle," the despair of his masters, the idol
of his schoolfellows. Ringleader in every escapade,
fighting when he was not playing truant and defying
authority, the most birched boy in the school, he made
a promising start in a career which was to be so adven-
turous and unconventional.
From Eton he went into the Army; spent a year
in study and duelling at Gottingen, and two more at
138
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Hanover and Hesse-Cassel, painting both towns red
with his dissipations and pranks. Then back to
London, where for a few years he held his place as
the gayest man in town, hero of a long succession of
love adventures, duels, and bruising-matches.
Sated with such indulgences he resigned his com-
mission in the Guards, and took his sword out to
America, where the Revolution was in full flame ; and
there he performed such prodigies of valour, and
proved himself so able a tactician, that he won his
majority, and was appointed inspector of Volunteers.
In the midst of his martial glory, however, yellow
fever seized him in its deadly grip ; and, after a long
life-and-death struggle, he returned to England a
mere " bag of bones."
But George Hanger was by no means beaten by
fate. Before he had been many months in London
we find him welcomed into the circle of the rollicking
blades who were boon companions of George, Prince
of Wales, " First Gentleman in Europe," one of the
Prince's equerries, on a substantial salary, and his
chief favourite. Those were mad, merry days for the
future Baron the cockpit, the prize-ring, coaching,
philandering with bevies of Perditas, swaggering in
fine attire, filled his days to overflowing; the nights
were spent in feasting and drinking, at the gaming-
tables, and in more questionable haunts of pleasure.
139
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Many a tale is told of the pranks of Prince George
and his merry men in which George Hanger was ring-
leader. It was he who made that ludicrous wager
with the Prince, when, seated with Fox, Sheridan and
others of the same jovial kidney, he was being whirled
to Brighton behind the galloping horses driven by the
Prince himself. A dispute arose as to the relative
speed of turkeys and geese, over a course of ten miles.
His Royal Highness declared that the turkeys would
win easily; Hanger as enthusiastically backed the
humbler birds. A match was at once arranged. The
turkeys quickly established a commanding lead, and
looked winners all over ; but alas ! as the shades of
evening began to fall they took to the trees to roost,
and left the geese to romp in by a margin of miles.
Such is a sample of those merry, foolish days when
George Hanger was an idol of the most dissipated
coterie in England. But even in those days of
splendour the irrepressible George could not keep his
eccentricity within bounds. " He might be seen," to
quote from Mr. C. Redding's " Recollections," " rid-
ing his grey pony in Pall Mall without a servant;
then, dismounting at a bookseller's shop, he would
get a boy to hold his horse, and sit upon the counter
for an hour, talking to Burdett, Bosville, or Major
James, who used to haunt that shop, Budd and
Calkin's. He was a very rough subject, but honest
140
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
to the back-bone, and plain-speaking". He carried a
short, thick shillelagh, and now and then took his
quid. A favourite of the Prince of Wales, he
administered a well-merited reproof to the Prince and
the Duke of York, one day at Carlton House, for the
grossness of their language."
At other times he would slip away from the gilded
salons of Carlton House to spend a few hours in the
slums of the East End, roystering with pickpockets
and housebreakers, and convulsing them with his
drolleries, or to join a strolling band of gipsies, and
for a few happy days mend kettles with them as a
variant from robbing hen-roosts.
It was on one such excursion that, he tells us, he
lost his heart to " the lovely Egypta." " I used," he
writes, " to listen with raptures to the melodies of her
voice. I thought her the ' Pamela ' of Norwood, the
paragon of her race, the Hester of the nineteenth cen-
tury. But, alas, on my return after a short absence
one day, I found that she had gone off with a travel-
ling tinker of a neighbouring tribe, who wandered
about the country mending pots and kettles."
Thus unromantically ended the one real romance
in the life of this soldier of fortune, who lived and
died unwed. When he was wearied alike of Courts,
of slums, and gipsy-tents, he would take to his pen
and write a learned treatise on some military subject
141
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
which would command the admiration of the greatest
Army experts. " You would have made a great
General, George," his friend, the Prince, once said to
him, " if you weren't so fond of low company/'
" Your Royal Highness should not blame me," was
the quick retort, " for a preference which may be my
misfortune, but is certainly your fault." Whereupon
Europe's First Gentleman laughed until he grew
purple in the face, as he exclaimed : " You had me
there, George. I can never get any change out of
you, by gad !"
George Hanger gives a vastly entertaining account
of this period (and others) of his adventurous life in
his autobiography, which he humourously prefaced
with a portrait of himself dangling from a gallows, in
sly allusion to his name, Hanger. In it he declares,
with truth, that he had lived with men and women of
every rank, from the highest to the lowest, from St.
James's to St. Giles's, from the drawing-room to the
dust-cart, in palaces and night-cellars. But even the
glamour of Carlton House and the friendship of a
future King of England could not long hold his
adventurous spirit in check. He sought fresh worlds
to conquer, fresh experiences to stimulate his restless
appetite.
For a time he turned coal-merchant, and spent his
days touting for custom all over London, carrying
142
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
samples of his wares in every one of his pockets.
One day the Prince chanced to meet him on one of
his commercial rounds. " Well, George," he asked,
as he reined in his horse, " and how are coals to-day ?"
" Black as ever, please your Royal Highness," was
the ready retort, as George proceeded to submit his
specimens to his Royal friend, who sent him away
happy with an order for twenty tons.
When the black diamonds steadily refused to be
transmuted into gold George transferred his activities
to recruiting for the Army, spending ^500 out of his
own pocket in establishing agencies for the purpose.
For six years he toiled at perfecting his machinery;
then, as ill-luck would have it, his bubble burst. His
directors in Leadenhall-street quarrelled among
themselves, the scheme collapsed, and George lost at
one swoop his ,500, his salary of 600 a year, and
his long years of labour.
When at last his title came to him, on the death of
an older brother, George would have none of it.
Nothing made him more angry than to be addressed
as " Lord Coleraine " or " my lord." " Do you wish
to insult me, sir?" he would fiercely demand. " Plain
George Hanger is good enough for me; unless you
address me as ' Baron Coal ' without the ' raine,' for
that is appropriate enough."
And so he remained to the end of his days " plain
M3
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
George Hanger " ; and he was never happier than
when spending his evenings among his humble cronies
at the Sol's Arms in the Hampstead-road, presiding
over the merry meetings in the large armchair which
was always placed for him before the fire, and
addressed as " George " or " friend George " by the
local butcher or baker.
Thus this noble oddity drifted through the remain-
ing years of his chequered life, struggling to make
ends meet, smiling at his discomfiture and poverty,
his laughter always ringing loud among the gayest, a
joke ever on the tip of his clever tongue. He had
sampled life from the highest to the lowest, from
Court salons to sordid slums, from the soldiers' camp
to the gipsies' tent ; and had found his greatest happi-
ness in the humblest environment. His favourite
boast was that " he cared not a straw whether he was
a nobleman or a gentleman; but one thing he knew,
and that was that he was a dead shot." He was a
loyal friend to all, and no man's enemy but his own.
A few days before his death he declared that the
happiest time of his life was the year or so he spent in
King's Bench prison " those blessed regions of rural
retirement," as he called his gaol.
The end of his strange life is thus chronicled in the
"Gentleman's Magazine" in 1824: "March 3ist.
Died of a convulsive fit, at his residence, near the
144
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Regent's Park, aged seventy-three, the Right Hon.
George Hanger, Lord Coleraine of Coleraine, County
Londonderry, in the Peerage of Ireland; better known
by the title of Colonel Hanger, or the familiar appel-
lation of George Hanger."
M5
CHAPTER XV
THE WOMAN WHO MADE AN EMPEROR
WHO was Miss Howard, the woman of beauty and
mystery who played such a romantic part in the life
drama of Napoleon III.; who, more than all others,
helped to raise him to his Imperial throne; and who,
had Fate been kind to her, might have worn a crown
as Empress?
To this day none can say with certainty. From the
cradle to the grave her identity was as shrouded in
mystery as that of " Pamela," whose modest tomb-
stone in the cemetery of Montmartre bears no other
epitaph than this name of six letters. During her
life it was commonly believed that she had every
right to the ducal surname she bore that she was, in
fact, a daughter of a cadet of the noble house of
Howard. And even if this be but surmise, her
strangely dramatic life-story, which had many links
with our nobility, may legitimately be allowed a place
among these " Romances of the Peerage."
That the early part of Miss Howard's life was spent
in comparative obscurity seems probable. It is even
said that she first met the Prince in whose life she was
146
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
destined to play such a vital part in a West End
street on her way home from the saloon-bar over
which she presided. But if this were so, how are we
to account for the wealth which she undoubtedly pos-
sessed, and with which she so lavishly supplied the
pockets of the " hope of the Bonapartes " in the days
of his exile and poverty ?
Such advantage as there was in the acquaintance-
ship thus unconventionally struck up was certainly
all on the side of Louis Napoleon. She was young
and beautiful, " as fair a rose of girlhood as could be
found in the whole of England." He the " lank-
haired adventurer," as the Tsar called him was a
" mean, shuffling figure of a man " stout, sallow-
faced, heavy-jowled, with a preternaturally grave, in-
scrutable face, relieved only by a pair of fine grey
eyes, magnetic and impressive.
She was undoubtedly rich; he was poor. She had
legions of high-placed admirers, including such hand-
some gallants as the Duke of Beaufort, My Lords
Malmesbury and Chesterfield and Count D'Orsay
all devout worshippers at the shrine of her beauty.
He, in spite of his Royal pretensions, was regarded
contemptuously, or only barely tolerated by English
Society.
What was it in this penurious, down-at-heels Prince
M7
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
that attracted the lovely Miss Howard ? " It was
pity; nothing else," she declared in later years when
her loyalty was rewarded with slights. Probably it
was pity in part; but more largely the romance with
which she invested this pretender to a throne and a
woman's wish to share a life which had such splendid,
if nebulous, possibilities. However this may have
been, we know that from their first meeting Miss
Howard dedicated her life and her fortune to her
shabby admirer with a devotion of which none
but a highly romantic woman could have been
capable.
To her eager and sympathetic ears he confided his
hopes and his despair. One day his future was full
of golden promise the crown of Emperor, which his
uncle had lost, was in his hands; the next brought a
black mood of despondency which no ray of hope
penetrated. As his moods alternated, she revelled
with him in his visions of coming grandeur, or with
buoyant words dissipated the clouds that brooded
over him. She fed the flames of his ambition, poured
healing balm on the wounds left by the slights to which
he was daily subjected, and when his fortune seemed
darkest infused new life and hope into him. Her
purse was ever at his service she paid his debts, and
in a hundred unostentatious ways ministered to him.
Well might he exclaim in later and other years, " It
148
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
is to you alone that I owe my crown. Without
your sweet help and encouragement I should
never have emerged from those black years in
London."
Can one wonder that such devotion, allied to such
beauty, made a complete conquest of the Prince's
heart, or that the friends so romantically brought to-
gether became ardent, if illicit, lovers ? Not only did
Miss Howard place her gold and her encouragement
at the service of her lover, but it was largely her fer-
tile brain that made his way clear to the throne of
France. She enlisted the help of powerful friends in
England and in France. She made many a journey,
in various disguises, across the Channel, mixing with
all sorts and conditions of people, feeling the pulse
of opinion towards her princely protege, and making
friends for him wherever she went by the joint help
of tongue and purse, until, as was disclosed later by
certain papers found in the secret cabinet of the
Emperor, she had spent no less than ,40,000 on pav-
ing the way to the throne for him.
It was she who too confidently inspired that ill-
fated coup in which Napoleon landed in France with
half-a-hundred followers an eagle, emblem of his
coming sovereignty, perched on his shoulder. At the
first shots that greeted him his soldiers turned tail,
and his eagle took wing, to be captured a few days
149
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
later unromantically devouring sausages in a butcher's
shop; while the princely leader of the invading army
paid for his rashness by a sentence of six years' im-
prisonment.
When, in 1846, Napoleon escaped, and made his
way again to England, it was Miss Howard, with un-
shaken loyalty, who received and cared for him,
supplying him with funds, and inspiring him with new
hopes and courage. Had it not been for her cheery
optimism he would, as he confessed later, have finally
abandoned all hope of a crown. But although neither
knew it, this darkest hour was near the dawn which
came, two years later, when Louis Philippe was de-
throned, and the way at last seemed clear to the man
who aspired to be his successor.
When, full of a new hope, he journeyed to Paris, it
was with Miss Howard as companion, to watch over
his interests and to take care of him as none other
could have done. The tide of his fortunes had at
last turned. With dramatic swiftness the returned
exile was elected Member of the Assembly and Prince
President of the Republic. The ultimate goal was
now at hand; and through the final struggle for the
throne Miss Howard's devotion shone more re-
splendent than ever. The President required money
lots of money to strengthen his position, to
appease enemies, to win friends; and this Miss
'5
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Howard supplied with a lavish hand, until, with
emptied exchequer, she at last saw her idol wearing
the Imperial crown.
Seldom in the world's history has a woman's devo-
tion to a man reached such splendid heights of self-
sacrifice, and never did loyalty so richly deserve its
reward. In his days of obscurity and poverty, when
all his castles were still in the clouds, Napoleon had
many a time vowed that the woman who was so good
to him should share his throne in the years to come;
and Miss Howard would have been untrue to her sex
if she had closed her eyes to this splendid possibility.
And, indeed, for a time it seemed that her lover might
keep his vow. One of his first acts was to confer a
title on her as Comtesse de Beauregard; to settle a
pension of ,2,000 a year on her; and to present to
her a mansion and an estate near Versailles which had
once belonged to the Bourbons.
But it soon became clear that he designed the wed-
ding-ring for another. He hawked his false heart
around all the Courts of Europe; but no Princess
could be found to accept it, even though he carried
with it a crown. Thus spurned, he might have
claimed every justification for placing the ring on the
unroyal finger of the woman who had practically given
him his crown ; and he might indeed have done so had
he not at this crisis in his life fallen under the spell
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
of the most lovely woman in Europe, the Comtesse de
Teba, who, through her grandfather, William Kirk-
patrick, had in her veins some of the best blood of
Scotland, and through her father, the Comte de
Montijo, a liberal strain of Spanish blue blood.
Napoleon, ever defenceless in the presence of
beauty, was the last man to resist such an appeal as
the lovely Comtesse made to his passions. The pic-
ture of Eugenie de Montijo at this time of her peerless
youth is irresistible in its seductiveness. She had, we
are told, " features of classic regularity ; a dazzlingly
fair complexion, heightened by the burnished gold ot
her hair, and by eyes whose deep blue darkened to
violet under the shade of their long lashes. Her
dainty head was exquisitely poised on divinely-
moulded shoulders; her tall and pliant figure was
faultless in its grace and symmetry; and her hands
and feet were small as those of a child."
Such was Eugenie de Montijo, Comtesse de Teba,
granddaughter of a Scottish wine-merchant, when her
beauty dazzled the eyes of Napoleon, fresh to his
crown, and who, with a glance of her eyes, brought the
Autocrat of France to her feet. Miss Howard was
not long left in ignorance that her place had been
taken by the most dangerous rival in Europe. But
the woman who had clung so loyally to Napoleon
through his long years of eclipse was not going to
152
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
yield her place to another now that his sun had
reached its zenith.
Though youth had fled, and with it much of the
beauty that held her lover captive, she fought for her
place in his heart as a mother would fight for a child
in the hour of danger. She followed him, we are
told, " like his shadow ; insisted on a special and con-
spicuous place by his side at reviews and other cere-
monies, and generally strove to assume the position
of a recognised favourite." She claimed and was
given a suite of apartments in Napoleon's chateau of
St. Cloud ; and at every State function at the Tuileries
eclipsed all rivals by the splendour of her attire.
Never was man placed in a more embarrassing pre-
dicament than Napoleon, by this duel between two
women for his favour. But the contest was from the
first an unequal one. Youth and a fresher, more
radiant beauty were bound to win the verdict, and all
Miss Howard's brave struggles were powerless to
avert the issue.
When she learned that Napoleon had actually
offered his hand to her rival, and that her hopes of
wearing the wedding-ring were at an end, her rage
and disappointment were quite tragic in their
vehemence. She wept, and stormed, and fainted;
vowed that she would end a life which was no longer
of any value to her; and heaped reproaches on her
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
false lover, to whom she had given all, and from whom
she had received this reward. But to all her tears
and reproaches Napoleon was adamant ; he had made
up his mind that the Comtesse de Teba should be his
Empress and no other; and he declared that, unless
Miss Howard " behaved herself," he would pack her
off to America and finally disown her.
This threat, and the hopelessness of her position,
which she now fully realised, brought her at last to a
proper state of submission, which her recreant lover
rewarded with liberal gifts of money. " If I had but
anticipated this," the deserted woman pathetically de-
clared, " I should have done better to keep the
3,500,000 francs which he was to have paid me by the
end of 1853; and it was for this that I begged the
Emperor to tear up the first amount two million and
a half francs!"
One cannot resist a tribute of pity for a woman
whose long devotion had this shameful reward, or of
contempt for the man who could prove so false to
every sentiment of gratitude and loyalty.
Miss Howard did not stay in Paris to see the crown-
ing victory of her supplanter when, clad in a dress of
AlenQon lace, her slender waist girdled by the famous
diamond and sapphire belt (the first Napoleon's gift
to Marie Louise) , and with her blue eyes glowing with
happiness, Napoleon placed on her shapely head the
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
crown which his uncle had similarly placed on the
head of his second wife.
She sought distraction by travel in Italy, where she
met and, in her pique, married a handsome and grace-
less young Englishman, Clarence Trelawney, with
whom she led an unhappy life until divorce at last set
her free in 1865.
But to her last day she never forgave the Emperor
who had so spurned and slighted her. During her
closing years, we learn, " she frequently appeared in
the Champs Elysees and the Bois de Boulogne, driv-
ing a pair of superb bays, and manoeuvring in such
fashion as to meet their Majesties' equipage and stare
at them. Again at theatrical performances she would
turn her glasses with annoying persistency on the
Imperial box, her face showing the scorn she felt for
the crowned Judas who had betrayed her."
The end of her life came with sudden tragedy.
One August day in 1865, when she was still little over
forty, she was in perfect health ; the next, her troubled
heart was stilled in death. There were dark hints of
poison; but why her days were thus suddenly closed
in the prime of life and health must ever remain a
mystery, as inscrutable as that of her birth, and of the
conduct of the man to whose shallow affections and
selfish vanity she sacrificed not only her life, but all
that a woman holds dearest her fair fame.
CHAPTER XVI
A ROMANTIC WOOING
THERE were Arundells in England " ere William
fought and Harold fell "; and from the Conqueror's
time, when Roger de Arundell counted his lordships
up to twenty, to our own day they have always taken
rank among our oldest and proudest houses. Their
long pedigree bristles with doughty warriors, from Sir
John (who wielded such a deadly sword in France for
Henry VI.) downwards; and they have joined their
blood in wedlock with many of the noblest strains in
our Peerage.
It was from this stock of brave men and fair women
that Isabel Arundell drew her being, making her entry
on the world's stage, on which she was destined to play
so romantic and adventurous a role, one March day
in 1831, within sight of the Marble Arch. She was
the lineal descendant of Henry, sixth Baron Arundell
of Wardour; and among her ancestors was that Sir
Thomas Arundell who was cousin-german to Henry
VIII., and, through his wife, near of kin to two of
Henry's Queens Anne Boleyn and Catherine
Howard. She was, moreover, entitled to call herself
" Countess " of the Holy Empire by virtue of her
156
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
descent from the first lord; while her mother, sister to
the first Lord Gerard, boasted a common origin with
the Dukes of Leinster.
Such was the proud heritage of blood of this
daughter of Henry Raymond Arundell, who inherited
a liberal share of the " bravery, dare-devilry, and love
of conflict ' ' of the old Knights of Arundell and of the
beauty of the Arundell women; and whose life was to
give full play to these remarkable gifts. Her child-
hood and early girlhood were spent in a white,
straggling, old-fashioned manor-house in Essex,
" buried in bushes, ivy, and flowers," where she led
the free, untrammelled life of the country, drinking in
health and beauty with every breath, scampering over
the country with long poles and jumping the hedges in
summer-time; sledging, skating and sliding in the
winter-days; but finding her chief pleasure in the com-
pany of such vagrant gipsies as passed that way.
Among Isabel's Romany friends and admirers was
Hagar Burton, who one day cast the horoscope of the
beautiful English girl. " You will cross the sea,"
said the gipsy soothsayer, " and be in the same town
with your destiny, and know it not. Every obstacle
will rise up against you. Your life will be like
one swimming against big waves; but God will be with
you, so you will always win. You will bear the name
of our tribe (Burton) , and be right proud of it. You
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
will be as we are, but far greater than we. Your life
is all wandering, change, and adventure. One soul
in two bodies, in life or death, never long apart."
How strangely, uncannily true this prophecy was to
prove, her story will show.
Young as she was at the time, this daughter of the
Arundells gave promise of exceptional beauty. " I
had," she writes ingenuously, " large, dark blue eyes
and long, black eyelashes and eyebrows. I had very
white, regular teeth, and very small hands, feet, and
waist. I had beautiful hair very long, thick and
soft of a golden brown. My nose was aquiline. I
had all the material for a very good figure, and once a
sculptor wanted to ' sculp * me."
At seventeen Isabel Arundell, radiant with health
and youth, was taken from the country home in which
she had spent so many delightful tomboy years to
London, where she was soon caught in a whirl of gaiety
and fashionable pleasures. In the exclusive circle of
Almack's she was hailed as a new revelation of female
loveliness. " I overheard someone telling my
mother that I was quoted as the new beauty at the
Club," she writes in her diary, adding, with perhaps
a little mock humility, " Fancy, poor ugly me! "
It was in this hour of her new delights of conquest
that she confided to her diary her conception of the
man she would marry if she married at all. ' My
158
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
ideal," she wrote, " is about six feet in height, with
broad and muscular shoulders, a powerful and deep
chest. He has black hair, a brown complexion, a
clever forehead, large, black, wondrous eyes. He is
a soldier, a man, and a gentleman. . . . Such a
man only will I wed. ' ' Thus unconsciously did Isabel
Arundell draw a strikingly lifelike picture of the man
whom, a few months later, she was to meet so dram-
atically, and, after years of weary waiting, to wed.
The scene of this romantic encounter was Boulogne,
where Isabel went with her family in August, 1850,
to spend a delightful year or two. " One day," she
records, " when my sister and I were walking on the
ramparts, the vision of my brain came towards us.
He was (mark the description) five feet eleven inches
in height, very broad and muscular; he had very dark
hair, and dark, clearly-defined, sagacious eyebrows,
a brown, weather-beaten complexion; straight Arab
features; a determined-looking mouth, nearly covered
by an enormous black moustache. But the most re-
markable part of his appearance was two large, black,
flashing eyes, with long lashes, that pierced one
through and through.
He looked at me as though he read me through
and through in a moment, and started a little. I was
completely magnetised; and when we had got a little
distance away I turned to my sister and whispered,
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
' That man will marry me.' The next day he was
there again, and he followed us and chalked up, ' May
I speak to you? ' leaving the chalk on the wall; so I
took up the chalk and wrote back, ' No; mother will
be angry ' ; and mother found it, and was angry ; and
after that we were stricter prisoners than ever."
But, in spite of parental frowns, Isabel's fate was
sealed from the first glance of those dark, magnetic
eyes. Though she met her hero daily on the ramparts
for many weeks, she exchanged no word with him; but
at the sight of him, she confesses, " I used to turn red
and pale, hot and cold, dizzy and faint, sick and
trembling, and my knees used to nearly give way under
me." Fate, however, was not long so unkind to the
love-sick girl. One day she was invited to a tea-party
and dance at the house of some relatives, and " there
was Richard, like a star among rushlights ! That was
a night of nights; he waltzed with me once, and spoke
to me several times, and I kept my sash, where he
put his arm round my waist to waltz, and my gloves,
which his hand had clasped. I never wore them
again. ... I saw Richard every now and again
after that, but he was, of course, unconscious of my
feelings towards him."
Thus the months passed, full for Isabel of a heart-
breaking longing for the love of the man to whom,
though he knew it not, she had given her heart. " I
1 60
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
suffered much and long," she confides to her journal,
" and the name of the tribe, as Hagar Burton fore-
told, caused me many a sorrowful and humiliating
hour." And when, at last, the day dawned that was
to take her back to England and away from him, it
brought not even the poor solace of a leave-taking.
Four long and dreary years, in fact, crept heavily
by before Isabel Arundell again set eyes on the
romantic figure which had wrought such havoc with
her peace of mind. Meanwhile Captain Richard
Burton, the " biggest daredevil " in the British
Army, had risked his life on one mad enterprise after
another. Disguised as a dervish, he had made his
way through a thousand perils and hair-breadth
escapes to the sacred heart of Mecca, where
Mohammed's coffin swings between Heaven and earth;
he had journeyed to Harar in Abysinnia, where no
white man before him had ever dared to set foot; and
had paid for his temerity by a lance through his jaw,
which brought him to the verge of the grave. Burton
had a narrow escape on his way to Mecca, but the story
cannot be told here.
Meanwhile Isabel was breaking her heart in Eng-
land, praying for him, weeping for him, and crying in
her diary, " Will he never come home! How strange
it is; and how I still trust in Fate! " She scanned the
papers every day for some scrap of news of her hero;
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and wrote, " I glory in his glory But I am alone and
unloved. Is there no hope for me? "
When he returned to England, shattered in health,
she never caught a glimpse of him ; and within a month
he was off again to brave the horrors of the Crimea.
She made frantic efforts to follow him, as one of
Florence Nightingale's nurses; but she was told that
she was " too young and inexperienced, and would
not do." Her only solace was to devote herself heart
and soul to caring for the destitute families of the
soldiers who were sharing her hero's danger.
But the longest and darkest night leads at length to
the dawn. And dawn came with the primroses in
1856, when she was able to write in her diary, " I
hear that Richard has come home and is in town. God
be praised! " To know that he was near, though for
some months she never saw him, was Heaven after
the black years of waiting and praying and weeping.
One August day, however, Fate led her steps to his.
She was walking with her sister in the Botanical
Gardens, when she met him face to face. " We imme-
diately stopped and shook hands," she says, " and
asked each other innumerable questions of the four
intervening years. He asked me if I came often to
the Gardens. I said, c Oh, yes, we always come and
read and study here from eleven to one '
We were in the gardens about an hour; and when I
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
had to leave he gave me a peculiar look, as he did
at Boulogne. I hardly looked at him, yet I felt it, and
had to turn away. When I got home my mind was
full of wonder and presentiment; I felt frightened and
agitated."
Many such happy meetings in the Gardens followed,
during which Isabel " trod on air." At the end of a
fortnight he stole his arm round her waist, laid her
cheek against his, and asked, " Could you do anything
so silly as to give up civilisation? If I can get the
Consulate of Damascus, will you marry me and go and
live there? " The ecstasy of the moment struck
Isabel dumb with emotion. At last she found voice to
falter out, cc I have prayed for you every morning and
night; and I would rather have a crust and a tent with
you than be Queen of all the world; and so I say now,
1 Yes, yes, YES! ' " " When I got home," she
says, " I knelt down and prayed, and my whole soul
was flooded with joy and thanksgiving."
For six years she had suffered, and prayed for this
crowning moment; but the goal of her ultimate happi-
ness was still far to seek. Her mother refused inexor-
ably to give her consent to the alliance; and after a
fortnight of this new-born happiness Burton was off
again on another of his daring journeys-r-this time to
explore the lake-regions of Central Africa; stealing
away without a word of final farewell, in order to spare
163
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
her the pain of parting. " My happiness," she says,
" had been short and bright, and now I had to look
forward to three years of my former patient endurance;
only with this great change before, I was unloved
and had no hope; now, the shame of loving unasked
was taken from me, and I had the happiness of being
loved and some future to look forward to."
While her lover was braving hardships and daily
risking his life among the untrodden ways of Central
Africa, Isabel sought distraction in travel in Italy and
Switzerland, until the glad day when she should see
him again; and this day came in the late spring of 1859.
When she read in the paper that he would soon arrive
she wrote in her diary, " I feel strange, frightened,
sick, stupefied, dying to see him, and yet inclined to
run away, lest, after all I have suffered and longed
for, I should have to bear more."
But the hard heart of Fate was at last softened
towards the woman who had borne its harshness with
such patience during nine years of thwarted hopes.
One beautiful May day she found herself in her lover's
strong arms. " I felt quite stunned," she says; " I
could not speak or move, but felt like a person coming
to after a fainting fit or a dream. I would have given
worlds for tears, but none came." And how proud
she was of her gallant lover her very own at last!
" I used to like to sit and look at him," she says, " and
164
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
think, ' you are mine, and there is no man on earth the
least like you.' "
But all was not even yet smooth sailing for the long-
parted lovers. Mrs. Arundell was deaf to all their
pleadings, and nothing was left for them but to take
their courage and their fate in their own hands, and
to marry without her approval even without her
knowledge.
One January day in 1861 Isabel Arundell stole
downstairs while her parents were still in bed, kissing
their door as she passed; entered a cab, and a few
minutes later was standing by her hero's side before
the altar of the Bavarian Catholic Church in Warwick-
street, while the words were spoken which set the seal
on all her sufferings and all her patient love. And
when her husband took her, after the ceremony, to his
bachelor lodgings, she says, " A peace came over me
that I had never known. I felt that it was for eternity,
an immortal repose; and I was in a bewilderment of
wonder at the goodness of God, Who had almost
worked miracles for us."
Thus, after much tribulation, Isabel (in later years,
Lady) Burton reached the haven of peace in her
husband's arms, to fare forth with him on such voyages
of strange adventure as seldom fall to the lot of woman,
and to carry beyond the grave such a love as has seldom
blessed the life of man.
165
CHAPTER XVII
THE MAD KNIGHT OF MALTA
AMONG the families that left their lands and castles in
fair France to accumulate lordships and honours under
our Norman and Plantagenet Kings, not one can claim
a prouder ancestry than the house of Courtenay, Earls
of Devon.
Even in their own native land, where they were
firmly seated as Lords of Courtenai Castle and large
estates before the Conqueror ever came to set a
marauding foot on our shores, there was, Gibbon
asserts, but one line superior to theirs in " achieve-
ments " that of the Royal House of Bourbon. And
even the Bourbons could boast no more Royal strain
of blood than that which was the Courtenay heritage
when, it is said, Elizabeth of Courtenai was led to the
altar by Peter, son of King Louis le Gros.
However this may be, we know that more than seven
centuries ago Reginald de Courtenay, who came to
England in the retinue of Henry II.'s Queen,
Eleanor, was Baron of Okehampton, with ninety-three
knights to do him homage and service; and that, during
all these centuries, his descendants held their heads
high among the proudest of our nobles. They mated
with the daughters of Veres and Despensers, Talbots
166
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and Bohuns, the cream of our feudal nobility; and one
of them found a wife in a daughter of Edward IV.
They were ever in the forefront of battle, and broke
their lances against more than one King; while their
voice was among the most powerful in the councils of
their Sovereigns.
It is inevitable that the story of a family so ancient
and so eminent should hold many romantic chapters.
Not the least strange is that which tells how the
Courtenay Earldom lay dormant for nearly three
centuries, through a stupid misreading of the patent
of creation, until William, third Viscount Courtenay,
thanks to the keen and trained eyes of Sir Harris
Nicolas, established his claim in 1831, and gave a new
lease of life to it. But perhaps the most remarkable
chapter of all is that which tells the story of the ' f mad
knight of Malta," on whom more than one person now
living in the county of Kent may have set eyes as
children.
Before William, Lord Courtenay, had enjoyed his
restored Earldom a year, and when he had taken his
new honours out of the country for a time, there
appeared at Boughton-under-Blean, a village between
Canterbury and Faversham, a magnificent individual
who announced himself to the world as " Sir William
Percy Honywood Courtenay, Knight of Malta, son of
Lord Courtenay and heir of Lord Mount-Cashell."
Naturally, the appearance of such a great man
167
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
caused a flutter among his rustic neighbours, who were
as impressed by his geniality as by his splendours and
his rank. There was no false pride about this blue-
blooded scion of the Courtenays; he was hail-fellow-
well-met to any rustic who touched his hat to him; and,
although he was familiar with the magnificence of
Courts, he was as ready to hobnob with Giles over a
glass of pothouse beer as to crack a joke with King
William himself, who, he said, was one of his bosom
friends.
He had a mission in life, he confided to his bucolic
admirers, that of regenerating society. He would do
away with those hateful tithes; he was a champion of
pure election; he intended to free the poor from taxa-
tion; to sweep away Corporations; and he painted to
his open-mouthed friends a glorious day when each
cottager should feast on roast beef and plum-pudding,
washed down by copious draughts of nut-brown ale.
Such were the seductive lures Sir William displayed
to his companions of the taproom and the cottage, who
knew not (and probably cared less) that my lord of
Devon had no such son as this genial stranger in their
parts, who was moreover no more heir to Lord Mount-
Cashell than to the Man in the Moon. Nor did they
know that, a few months earlier, " Sir William " had
been masquerading at the Rose Inn, Canterbury, as
Count Rothschild; or that, less than a year before that,
168
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
he had been serving pennyworths of gin and whisky
over a bar in Truro, where he had signed his name,
' John A. Thorn." Such was the true origin of the
fraudulent " Knight of Malta " who came in 1832 to
dazzle the eyes and fuddle the brains of the Boughton
rustics a small spirit-dealer in a Cornish town, known
to his friends as plain " John Thorn."
From Boughton the fame of the " noble lord "
whose mission was to revolutionise life for the poor
spread throughout the countryside, until he counted
his friends and supporters by hundreds. It is little
wonder then that, when December of 1832 brought a
General Election, there should be a general cry for
Courtenay, " the poor man's friend, and the apostle
of reform."
At Canterbury the show of hands was declared to be
in his favour; and he actually polled 375 votes against
the 800 odd scored by his successful opponents. And
never surely did candidate present himself to electors
in such gorgeous guise.
"A Sir William Courtenay," wrote a Canterbury
lady at the time, " has been haranguing the popula-
tion here almost daily with novel and ludicrous
addresses. He is encased in a superb dress of crimson
velvet richly ornamented with gold lacings, tassels,
and epaulettes; and he goes about armed with a valu-
able sword and a dagger, which he occasionally
169
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
threatens to use against any person who happens to
interrupt him. . . . Although he is considered
handsome, his face is much disfigured by a super-
abundance of moustache and beard."
To this magnificence, so calculated to impress the
bucolic mind, he seems to have added the antics of a
mountebank; for, we are told, at election meetings he
" would bound over the heads of the people in front
of him, and alight on the table in the centre of the hall
in a theatrical attitude, quite a la Kean."
Although our " Knight of Malta," the proud and
urbane Courtenay, thus failed to secure a mandate for
Westminster, he was incomparably the hero of the
hour. To such a pitch of idolatry did he rouse the
electors that on nomination day they crowded round
his carriage in thousands, took the horses from the
traces, and drew him in triumph to the Rose Inn,
where, from the balcony, he carried his audience off
their feet by his glowing oratory and his visions of
Utopian days to come under his auspices. After the
poll was declared he was again dragged in triumph
through Canterbury streets to a jubilant, if discordant,
accompaniment of bands; and again his eloquence
swayed the multitude, like so many " reeds shaken
with the wind," from the Rose balcony.
Although this defeat was followed by a veritable
Sedan when, at a later election for a division of the
170
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
county, he polled barely a dozen votes, our Courtenay
knight was by no means downhearted. He set to work
to enhance his already great popularity with the lower
orders; and spent his days touring the country in the
most fantastic guises he could procure from theatrical
costumiers, " standing treat " at every public-house
on his route, and sharing a crust of bread and cheese
at hundreds of labourers' cottages everywhere
capturing hearts by his condescension, and dazzling
eyes by his gorgeous raiment and courtly manners.
But Nemesis was already on the track of " Sir
William." In February, 1833, a smuggling-boat was
captured by a Revenue cutter off the Deal coast, and
the smugglers were hauled to Rochester to answer for
their crime. It is true that nothing contraband had
been found on the " Admiral Hood "; but the
Revenue officers declared that, just before the capture,
certain tubs had been flung overboard by the smugglers
and picked up by the cruiser's crew.
This was an opportunity not to be missed by the
popularity-hunting knight, who appeared at the trial,
and swore that he himself had seen the incriminating
tubs floating in the water before the Revenue men came
on the scene. For this flight of fancy he was indited
for perjury, " wilful and corrupt "; and when it was
proved that at the very time he professed to have seen
the smuggled flotsam he was listening to a sermon at
v
171
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Boughton Church, Sir William had to listen to a
sentence of three months' durance, to be followed by
seven years' transportation beyond the seas. Before,
however, he had served his three months he was
declared insane; and, instead of spending his next few
years in a foreign land, he spent them in the Kent
County Lunatic Asylum, near Maidstone.
Of course the man had been insane from (and pro-
bably before) the day he left his Truro bar; but when
the asylum doors closed on him in 1833 his amazing
career was by no means ended. In 1838, after five
years' confinement, he was back again in his old
haunts, certified a sane man once more, and living
modestly as a lodger at a farmhouse a few miles from
Canterbury. His restored sanity, however, was short-
lived; for, within a few weeks, we find him haranguing
his rustic neighbours more vehemently than ever. Not
content, as before, with painting glowing pictures of
the good times coming, his appeal was now to their
passions; his programme, one of violence.
One May day in 1838 his projects came to a head.
Rallying round him a few scores of his dupes, he set
out for Fairbrook at the head of his bedraggled sup-
porters, with flags flaunting the Courtenay lion
fluttering in the breeze, and a pole crowned by a loaf
of bread borne proudly aloft in the van. Each mile
added recruits to the straggling army, until hundreds
172
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
were seen marching under the Courtenay pennons as
full of valorous talk as any men-at-arms ever led by a
lord of Devon against Frenchmen or Scots in the long-
gone centuries.
For this was no pacific army. It was out to do
doughty deeds; and, as their courage was recruited at
every public-house on the way, Courtenay's soldiers
began to cry aloud that they had " bloody work to
do." At Dargate Common the army came to a halt
while its leader, removing the shoes from his feet,
prayed aloud half-an-hour on end, denouncing every-
thing and everybody to the Almighty. After a night
spent at Bossenden Farm, the march was resumed, by
Sittingbourne, Newnham, Eastling and Selling each
village and hamlet swelling the numbers, and blazing
haystacks marking the route, until the rioters found
themselves back again at Bossenden.
Here Farmer Calver, who had already seen more
than he wished to see of the Courtenay rabble, sent for
the police; and three constables, armed with a warrant
for " Sir William's " arrest, soon made their belated
appearance. No sooner had the boldest of the trio
advanced to make the arrest than " Sir William," pro-
ducing a pistol, shot him dead. His respite, however,
was brief. An urgent message was sent to Canterbury
and Maidstone for soldiers; and within a few hours a
hundred men of the 45th Regiment, led by Lieutenant
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Bennett, arrived on the scene, with a magistrate to
represent the strong arm of the law.
Meanwhile the Maltese knight and his followers had
taken refuge in the heart of a neighbouring wood,
determined to sell their lives dearly, their desperate
courage stimulated by their leader's appeals to them
to " quit themselves like men," and " not to count
their lives dear." There was little time for such
exhortation; for a hundred soldiers had already thrown
around the rabble a girdle of steel and muskets; and
the lieutenant was advancing to demand surrender " in
the Queen's name."
But almost before the first word had left his lips
" Sir William," with deadly aim, had shot the officer
through the heart. The madman's last moment had
now come. Before the smoke had left the assassin's
pistol, a volley of shots rang out. " Sir William "
and nine of his dupes fell dead; many others were
wounded; and the rest of the rioters were flying in all
directions, as fast as fear-impelled legs could carry
them.
Thus ignominiously ended the career of the mad
" Knight of Malta." He had come out to do
sanguinary work, and sanguinary work had been
done; for a dozen lives, including his own, had paid
the price of his insane enterprise. As for his silly
followers, many carried marks of that fatal day to their
graves; some were transported for life; others were
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
sent for varying periods to cool their ardour within
prison walls. It was a black day for the county of
Kent; and it will be many a long day yet before the
name of Courtenay is forgotten in hundreds of Kentish
homes.
But even death could not rob Courtenay of the popu-
larity he had won by his specious arts. To quote Dr.
C. Mackay, f< When the maniac Thorn or Courtenay
was shot, in the spring of 1838, the relic-hunters were
immediately in motion to obtain a memento of so extra-
ordinary an individual. His long black beard and
hair, which were cut off by the surgeons, fell into the
hands of his disciples, by whom they were treasured
with the utmost reverence.
" A lock of his hair commanded a great price, not
only among his followers, but among the more wealthy
inhabitants of Canterbury and its neighbourhood. The
tree against which he fell when he was shot was
stripped of all its bark by the curious; while a letter
with his signature to it was paid for in gold coins, and
his favourite horse became as celebrated as its master.
Parties of ladies and gentlemen went to Boughton from
a distance of a hundred and fifty miles to visit the scene
of that fatal affray, and stroke on the back the horse of
the mad ' Knight of Malta.' If a strict watch had
not been kept over his grave for months, his body
would have been disinterred, and the bones carried
away as memorials."
CHAPTER XVIII
A SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY SYREN
THE traveller whose steps took him as far as Florence
about the time when Charles II. was restored to the
throne of his fathers might, if he were fortunate, have
seen something at least as fair as any other that city
of beauty could boast. True, this vision of delight
was only a child of some eleven summers ; but she was
incomparably so contemporaries tell us the love-
liest child in all Italy, with a cascade of glorious black
hair rippling far below her waist, with eyes blue as
Italy's own sky, and sparkling with irresistible gaiety ;
a complexion delicately tinted as a rosebud; and the
figure of a sylph, instinct with grace and an abound-
ing vitality.
Such was Christine Dudley, who to a beauty in-
herited from centuries of fair northern ancestresses
added the vitality and grace of the South. More
Italian in many ways than the Italians, she was by
birth half English and half French; the daughter, on
one side, of a long line of Poitevin nobles; on the
other, of one of the most splendid of English houses,
having for great-grandfather that Robert Dudley,
Earl of Leicester, whose fascinations made a love-
176
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
sick woman of Queen Elizabeth almost to his last
day.
How this great grand-daughter of Dudley came to
be the boast and toast of Italy is easily explained.
My Lord Leicester's only son (whose legitimacy, by
the way, was gravely questioned) had left England to
make his home in Tuscany, and had so ingratiated
himself with Ferdinand II. that that Emperor had
made a Duke of him, leaving him to tack " Northum-
berland " on to his new title. And as Duke of
Northumberland Robert Dudley, the second, lived
and died. Of his sons, Charles, the eldest, succeeded
to the foreign Dukedom, and became the father of the
fairy to whom we are now introduced, and who was
later known from one end of Italy to the other as
Duchess of Northumberland, or, alternatively,
" Christina of Northumbria."
It was inevitable that a girl of such rare charms
and such exalted and romantic birth should have
lovers by the score, even before she emerged from
short frocks. All the youthful nobles in Florence
and in Rome (where also some of her early years were
passed) were the slaves of the " lovely little witch " ;
and so great was her fascination that it is even said
such a great man as the Constable Colonna, though
he had for wife one of Mazarin's loveliest nieces,
177
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
completely lost his head over the schoolgirl, and gave
his wife many a pang of jealousy.
Thus early did Christine Dudley begin to emulate
the love adventures of her handsome great-grand-
father, favourite of a Queen and breaker of women's
hearts ; and to prove that, in her case at least, the girl
is mother to the woman. But even she, conscious as
she already was of the power of beauty, could not have
foreseen the havoc she was to play in the years to
come with the hearts of men and the peace of their
wives.
The prize which tempted so many gallants thus
early was not long unappropriated. Christine had
barely seen her fourteenth birthday when her hand
was awarded, probably without any reference to her
heart, to the Marchese Paleotti, a man of some family,
but scarcely a match for this daughter of the great
Dudleys. Probably her ducal father thought it high
time his too fascinating and precocious daughter was
consigned to the keeping of a husband, and was
thankful to escape any future responsibility for her.
However this may be, the child-wife was certainly
none too happy in her new condition, although she
seems for a time at least to have been quite a model
spouse, as decorous and dutiful as any reasonable
husband could desire.
For eight years the Marchesa played this dutiful
178
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
role, while her charms were reaching their rich and
splendid maturity. It is a wonder that her pretty
head had not, long- before this, been completely turned
by the adulation and flatteries that were showered on
her. Her fame had travelled far and wide as the
loveliest of all the women in Italy, and her beauty was
but one of her many charms. Every poet and gallant
tried to outvie his fellows in the homage he paid to
her. Sonnets rained on her ; her praises were sung in
countless pamphlets and chronicles of the time; and
swords clashed and blood flowed to vindicate her title
as queen of living beauties.
" Such loveliness, such grace, and such wit," wrote
one enthusiastic admirer, " have never before been
enshrined in woman." According to Ghiselli she was
" the fairest, the most exquisite of her sex." Another
of her slaves vowed that she was " an angel who had
stooped to earth to show the possibilities of female
loveliness." And so, in sonnet and chronicle and
epigram, the story of Christine's superlative charm
has come down to us through the centuries. Such was
the fame of her beauty that we are told " Princes and
great nobles came from far distant Courts to gaze on
and pay homage to it"; and we know that the
Emperor Leopold, in token of his homage, sent her a
golden cross to wear.
Even now that she was a wife the Constable
179
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Colonna, who had been among her earliest admirers,
could not resist making love to her when he saw her
again, some years after she had worn her wedding-
veil, at Milan. We have this on the evidence of the
Constable's wife, the beautiful Maria Mancini, who
writes : " The Marchesa Paleotti, daughter of the
Duke of Northumberland, being then in the flower of
life, attracted the eyes of all. Those of the Constable
were no exception; and even had I been content not
to take these stolen glances as signs of his passion
for this fair lady, the attentions and assiduous com-
pliments he paid her would have left me no room for
doubt." Such is the striking tribute to Christine's
fascination paid by one of the fairest and (in this
case with good reason) most jealous women in
Europe.
In 1671, after she had been married eight years, the
Marchesa began to weary of the homely virtues, and
to seek distraction in a wider sphere innocent amuse-
ment on her part, it seems to have been, but rather
disastrous in its results ; for the most decorous of hus-
bands displayed an unseemly alacrity to leave the
most beautiful of wives to bask in her smiles; and
strange tales are told of their follies and extrava-
gances. In this year the Cardinal Legate found it
necessary to send the siren for four months to a con-
vent ; but whether this confinement was due to political
1 80
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
causes or in order to put it out of her power to work
more havoc history fails to enlighten us.
Restored to freedom, the Marchesa, possibly out of
revenge for such an indignity, appears to have given
full play to her fascinations; and undoubtedly dur-
ing this period, however really innocent her conduct
may have been, she gave the tongue of scandal much
cause to wag at her expense. Lovers flocked to her
thick as bees to a sugar-bowl, and each tried to eclipse
his fellows in the costliness of his presents and the
ardour of his wooing. We read of one grave senator
who showered costly jewels on her; of another who
left his wife and defied the thunders of the Church to
worship at her shrine. Men of all ranks and all ages
joined the satellites which circled round her, and to
one and all she was equally gracious and impregnable.
She drank in their flatteries, received their presents,
and played off one against the other to her infinite
amusement. Like my Lady Shrewsbury of " wanton "
fame, she loved to fan the flames of her lovers'
jealousies, and was by no means ill-pleased when
duels were fought and blood flowed for her.
Several times she was banished by the authorities,
alarmed by the havoc she was causing ; but she always
reappeared, looking lovelier and more dangerous
than ever, to resume her conquests and her " amuse-
ments." "Within a month or so," says Teodor de
181
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Wyzewa, " she is back again in Bologna, with all the
husbands in the town flocking to her."
And the remarkable thing is that, in spite of such
" goings on," she was universally beloved. " The
children," we are told, " fall in love with her, and do
the maddest things to win her affection." Even the
very wives whose husbands she had lured away were
among the crowd of her worshippers ; so much so that
when the Marchesa was once ordered off to her
country-house by the Cardinal Legate, two of them
the Marchesa Bentivoglio and the Contessa Canossa
actually went on their knees to implore the Legate
to call her back. As for the lower classes, they were
her veriest slaves, from the coachmen and porters to
the beggars in the street.
So powerless was Time to touch her beauty that at
forty she was constantly taken to be sister to her own
daughter, so radiantly youthful was she. It was at
this time, with her loveliness still at its zenith, that she
inaugurated those conversazioni at the Paleotti Palace
which caused so much, and often groundless, scandal.
To these brilliant receptions flocked all the greatest
men and most beautiful women in Italy, with many
others who could not claim either description a mot-
ley gathering with but one common link, an idolatrous
admiration of their hostess.
The jealousies thus provoked had their inevitable
182
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
outlet, in such a hot-blooded country, in countless
duels, and more than one murder. On one occasion
almost all her guests were poisoned by chocolate
served to them by a Turkish girl, a -protegee of the
Marchesa; and one, the Marquis Guido Pepoli, died.
Who was responsible for the poisoning does not seem
clear; but suspicion pointed to the Marchesa's own
son. In spite, however, of duels and poisonings and
bloodshed, the lustre of the Marchesa's reign con-
tinued undimmed. She turned the heads of all the
men who entered her salon; and while receiving their
presents and their honeyed words, forfeited none of
the smiles of their wives.
And while enjoying her own triumphs she did not
forget to minister to the happiness of her less beauti-
ful guests. She revelled in finding husbands for
them ; and it is said she was responsible for hundreds
of engagements, some of them ill-assorted, it is true,
but for the most part reasonably happy.
For her own daughter, Diana, who had inherited
much of her mother's charms, she secured a splendid
alliance none other than the son of her old lover,
the Constable Colonna. When the youthful Prince
Colonna first set eyes on the fair Diana, at a Bologna
theatre, he promptly fell " head over ears " in love
with" her, and vowed he would know no peace until
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
he had won her for wife. The Marchesa was de-
lighted, and having once caught the Prince in the
toils gave him no chance of escape, although it re-
quired two years of diplomacy to secure the consent
of his parents.
This supreme effort in match-making proved to be
the climax of the Marchesa's era of splendour. For
forty years she had reigned a queen over all hearts;
there was no cup of pleasure that she had not drained ;
no gift of Fortune that had not fallen, almost un-
sought, into her lap. But no sun that ever shone,
however brilliant, but comes at last to its setting; and
the Marchesa's sun was destined to set in tragedy.
Her memory has been assailed by those who never
knew her; and no doubt her life was not as flawless
as her beauty. But when we consider the country and
the times in which she lived a land of hot passions
and deeds of violence; an era of licence scarcely
imaginable in our more sober day probably the
gravest charge that can be brought against Christine
of Northumbria is that she did not surround her
beauty with the restraints of modesty and decorum,
that she made her vanity minister to the unhappiness
of others.
But whatever the degree of her faults or her folly,
she paid a heavy price for both before death came to
claim her. Her favourite daughter, lovely almost as
184
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
herself, shut herself in a convent, where she lost her
reason, and died a madwoman. Another daughter
was wedded to Count Roffeni, who treated her with
infamous cruelty before deserting her; and when,
freed by death from her tyrant, she became the wife
of the Earl of Shrewsbury, she had to abjure her re-
ligion, to her mother's intense and lasting grief. But
the heaviest blow of fate fell when the son she loved
so well, her " David," was driven in disgrace from the
Italian Army and ended his days on the headsman's
block in London.
Crushed under these repeated blows, the Marchesa
retired from the world, in which she had so long
played so dazzling a part, to spend her last days in a
belated piety, and to " review her past errors " with
perhaps an excessive " abhorence." " I have no
regret," she wrote in one of the exquisite sonnets
which have survived her, " for the loss of the flower of
my youth my desires are stilled for ever. All my
pleasure is plunged in oblivion. As for the few days
that remain to me of this world, I dedicate them, O
God, to Thee."
Thus, in loneliness and penitence, tasting the bitter
dregs of the vanity of life, died the woman who, prob-
ably more potently than any other, has wielded the
sceptre of a dangerous beauty.
CHAPTER XIX
PEASANT OR COUNTESS
WAS Maria Stella, Lady Newborough, the low-born
daughter of an Italian peasant, or was she a Royal
Princess, by right of birth the greatest lady in
France? Such is the problem which her ladyship
spent a fortune and half a lifetime in a vain effort to
solve; and which to-day lacks conclusive answer as
much as when, with her last gasp, this unhappy
heroine of one of the most mysterious of Peerage
romances branded Louis Philippe, King of France,
" a brigand and usurper."
Lady Newborough first opened her eyes on the
world that was to bring her so much romance and
tragedy in the small village of Modigliana, precari-
ously perched on a slope of the Apennines. You may
read to-day in the register of the village church the
original record of her birth, which runs thus : " Maria
Stella Petronilla was born yesterday to Lorenzo
Ferdinand Chiappini, public constable of this place,
and Vicentia Diligenti, his wife, both of this parish,
and was baptised on April i7th, I773-"
She was the first child of the rustic policeman and
his dark-eyed peasant wife; and when other children
186
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
followed in quick succession, the villagers were quick
to note and comment on the difference between the
fair-haired, blue-eyed Maria, with her dainty figure
and air of grace and distinction, and the black-
browed, coarse-featured little peasants who called
her sister.
Was it possible, the gossips whispered, that they
could be children of the same parents? It was
noted, too, with many a sly hint, that the great lady
of the place, the Countess Camilla Borghi, showed a
marked affection for the little fairy child, while ignor-
ing her brothers and sisters; and it was whispered,
" Ah, the Countess knows more than we do ! " And
so probably she did.
Had it not been for the Countess's kindness, Maria
Stella's years would have been less happy than they
were; for, although her father, the constable, always
treated her with kindness and a curious deference, her
mother's attitude to her was one of harshness and open
dislike. The removal of the family to Florence,
where her father had received an appointment as
sergeant of police, was hailed with delight by the
child, associated as it was with a promise that she
should be trained for the stage. Three delightful
years of singing and dancing lessons followed before
the climax of her happiness was reached when she
made her first curtsey in response to the applause
187
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
which greeted her debut. At sight of her " beauti-
ful as a dream, and graceful as a sylph " the Floren-
tine audience completely lost their hearts ; and before
she had concluded her first dance dainty, bewitch-
ing, ethereal in its lightness they rose as one man
and cheered her in an ecstasy of enthusiasm.
Among the audience on this first night of her
triumph was a sedate, plain -featured man of middle
age, known to the Florentines as the " eccentric Eng-
lishman," and in England as Lord Newborough a
man who had squandered most of his fortune, and on
the death of his wife, a daughter of the Earl of
Egmont, had gone abroad to try to repair his shattered
fortunes by a few years of obscure and economical
living, little dreaming, no doubt, of the romance that
awaited him in far-away Tuscany.
To the British Peer, sated and disillusioned by the
world's pleasures, the sight of this stage fairy, with
her auburn hair and blue eyes, and intoxicating grace
of movement, was a revelation of new delights, a re-
newal of the youth to which he had bidden " good-
bye." At any cost he must possess himself of her;
and before he retired that night he had discovered
her home, and had penned a letter to her father with
an offer of his hand an offer which, accompanied as
it was by promise of substantial bribes, proved too
tempting to be resisted.
1 88
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
The child, horror-struck at such a proposal, pro-
tested, with tears and pleadings, against the proposed
marriage. She loathed the offer; and when she saw
her ugly, elderly suitor, she still more loathed her
husband-to-be. But tears and entreaties were equally
unavailing. Her constable-father was determined
that she should, willy nilly, be " my lady," to the
enrichment of his purse ; and within a few weeks Sir
Horace Mann, then our Minister at Florence, was
able to write home, " Lord Newborough, who has re-
sided here in a very obscure manner since 1782, on
nth inst. (February, 1786), signed a contract of mar-
riage with a dancing-girl about thirteen years of age,
the daughter of a constable."
A few weeks of dazzling triumph on the stage, then,
with dramatic suddenness, a loveless marriage to a
man more than old enough to be her father, such was
the strange experience of this beautiful child of
mystery on the threshold of the new life to which she
had looked forward with such glad anticipation.
That such a union should be unhappy was inevitable.
The girl-Baroness frankly detested her lord, and made
no concealment of her dislike. Each day brought its
quarrels, its rages, and its tears; until Lord New-
borough, driven to despair, disappeared one day,
leaving behind a note in which he declared his inten-
tion of committing suicide. " My dear Lunatic," was
189
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the only answer she vouchsafed, " if you wish to give,
me the greatest proof of your affection, hasten to carry
out your threat."
Under such a chilling douche his resolution quite
naturally evaporated. He returned to his little
shrew; but found life so unbearable, through the exac-
tions of the father and the mutiny of the daughter,
that he was glad to escape to his native Wales, tak-
ing his lady with him; and there, after some years
of qualified peace, during which Lady Newborough
bore two sons to him, he died in 1807, twenty-one
years after his romantic and unhappy marriage to the
dancing-girl. Within three years the Baroness was
again led to the altar this time by a Russian noble-
man, Baron Ungern-Sternberg a union which proved
equally unfortunate.
Thus, in the year 1820, we find Maria Stella, now a
woman of forty-seven, seeking distraction by travel
in her native Italy, and visiting, as an act of filial
duty, her parents in their humble home in Florence.
Her peasant father was now in very feeble health, and
obviously at death's door; but, although she wished
to tend him during his last days of life, she found, to
her amazement, every obstacle put in the way of her
seeing him.
Occasionally, by subterfuge, and in the absence of
her mother and elder brother, who did not conceal
190
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
their aversion to her, she was able to spend a few
moments by his bedside; but, although he greeted
her with kindness and a smile of pleasure, he seemed
strangely reserved and formal. He made mysterious
references to some wrong he had done her the
rambling, she concluded, of a wandering brain; for
when she begged him to be frank and explain his
meaning, he immediately changed the subject. That
he was brooding over some secret of the past, how-
ever, seemed clear. But what could the secret be?
He died without giving any clue to it.
A few months later the secret was partly revealed
by a letter which was placed in her hands a letter
written by her father some months before his death,
and entrusted to a friend to give to her when he was
no more, and which opened with the startling declara-
tion, " My daughter you are not." It was a strange
story that was thus unfolded in the feebly-penned
words of the man she had always regarded as her
father. A few weeks before Maria Stella's birth, the
story ran, a great foreign nobleman had come with
his wife and retinue to Modigliana. The lady was
about to become a mother, and so was the writer's wife.
It was of the utmost importance that the noble-
man's wife should give birth to a boy-child ; and it was
arranged between the fathers-to-be that, if the great
lady's ehild should be a girl and the peasant's child a
191
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
boy, the infants should be exchanged a favour for
which the constable was promised a large sum of
money. " His lady," ran the letter, " had a daughter,
and my wife a son ; the children were exchanged, and
I was made comparatively rich. The Countess, her
husband, and boy, and their numerous suite, speedily
left our quiet little town, and were never more heard
of."
Such was the remarkable story told by this voice
from the grave; and as Maria Stella read, her feelings
of amazement gradually gave place to one of delight,
of triumph. She, who had always regarded herself
as low-born, was in reality the daughter of a noble-
man, the equal at least by birth of her two husbands
and of all the great ladies whom, in spite of her title,
she had looked on as creatures superior and apart.
But who was this high-placed father who had so basely
abandoned her, to adopt as his heir the base-born son
of the peasant whom she had known as father? The
discovery of this vital secret became the passion of
her life.
She lost no time in journeying to her birthplace,
where from a priest, the Countess Borghi's confessor,
she got her first clue. He declared that her mysteri-
ous parents were the Comte and Comtesse de Join-
ville. And his statement was confirmed by two old
servants of the Countess, who vowed that she was
1 92
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the very image of her high-born mother. The iden-
tity of her parents thus disclosed, the next step was
to discover who the Comte de Joinville was; and by
travelling to Joinville she was able to learn that this
was a title often assumed, during his travels, by none
other than Louis Philippe, Duke of Orleans, a Prince
of the Blood Royal of France.
Here, indeed, was a startling discovery. To the
delight of knowing that she was of noble birth was
added the amazing disclosure that she was a Princess,
the descendant of a long line of Kings, and one of the
greatest ladies, not only in France, but in Europe !
Moreover, since this was so, the Duke's eldest son, a
probable King of France, could be none other than
the son of the village constable, who had so cruelly
been put in her place as an infant. Was there ever
in all the romantic drama of life a situation so incon-
ceivably strange? The peasants' daughter had blos-
somed into a Princess, a Prince's son and King-to-be
^vas born to a peasant-cradle !
Equipped with this astounding knowledge, Lady
Newborough set to work to secure public recognition
of her rank and rights ; only to find how vastly more
difficult it was to convince others than to satisfy herself.
At first, it is true, her success was almost beyond ex-
pectation. When she appealed to the Bishop of
Faenza to have the record of her baptism amended,
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the investigation that followed resulted in an unquali-
fied admission of her claim. " It is plainly proved,"
ran the judgment of the Bishop's court, " that the
Comte Louis de Joinville exchanged his daughter for
the son of Lorenzo Chiappini; and that Demoiselle
de Joinville was baptised under the name of Maria
Stella, with the false statement that she was the
daughter of L. Chiappini and his wife."
It now remained to prove to the world that the
Comte de Joinville was identical with the Due
d'Orleans, and to persuade Louis XVIII. to recog-
nise her title to rank as a Royal Princess; and with
this stage of her programme her troubles began in
earnest. She squandered money right and left in
fruitless efforts to secure these objects. She was
victimised, one after another, by a succession of
swindlers, to whom she gave large sums of money,
with which each in turn promptly absconded, until
her fortune, large as it was, was almost exhausted.
She travelled far and wide through the countries of
Europe to secure support to her pretensions; but
everywhere rebuffs and disappointments were her lot.
Thus the years passed, each leaving her more and
more broken in health and shattered in hope and
heart. As a last extremity she published her story
to the world in a book entitled " Maria Stella, or the
Exchange of a Girl of the Most Exalted Rank for a
'94
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Boy of the Lowest Condition " ; but no sooner had
the edition appeared than it was seized and destroyed
by order of the King the constable's son, who had
escaped the peasant-cradle to mount the throne of
France.
This was the last crushing blow to her hopes.
From that cruel day she resigned herself to despair.
For thirteen years more she dragged the weary bur-
den of life, nursing her sorrow and her baffled
ambition in her rooms in the Rue Vivoli, watching
through her windows the passing of the King who had
stolen her birthright from her ; surrounded by pictures
of the Orleans family, which, while proclaiming her
unmistakable likeness to them, were a constant re-
minder of the glories she had so tragically missed;
and feeding the sparrows which fluttered in flocks to
her window-sills to enjoy her bounty.
Thus, in solitude and sorrow, Maria Stella, Lady
Newborough, closed her eyes one December day in
1843, with the boom of the cannon in her ears which
proclaimed to the world the opening of the Chamber
by the King who, however innocently on his own part,
had wrecked her life, and who to his last day, crowned
monarch as he was, remained a peasant in looks and
speech and manners, and, moreover, the exact dupli-
cate of the village constable.
195
CHAPTER XX
THE EARL AND THE BUTCHER'S DAUGHTER
WHEN Frederick Augustus, fifth Earl of Berkeley,
rode with his attendant groom into Gloucester city one
autumn day in the year 1784 we may be sure that no
thought of love or of romance entered a mind absorbed
in the business that had brought him thus far from his
grim ancestral castle.
For nearly forty years he had kept a heart untouched
by the assaults of Cupid. Many a maid " of high
degree and fair to see ' ' had brought the battery of her
smiles and charms to bear on this handsome lord of
half a county, with a rent-roll of 50,000 a year; but
not one of them all had captured his fancy. And as
he rode that fine October morning through the
Gloucestershire lanes, he would no doubt have laughed
aloud had anyone suggested to him that he was making
the first stage on one of the most romantic journeys
ever undertaken by a British Peer.
In addition to his broad acres, his historic castle and
his elongated rent-roll, my Lord of Berkeley could
boast a lineage which, for length and distinction, had
few rivals in England. As he glanced down the long
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
vista of his ancestry he could well afford to smile at
the family-trees of many of our proudest Dukes, whose
very names were unknown when his own tree had
struck down its roots and spread its branches for
centuries.
Before the Conqueror ever set foot on Kentish soil
the first forefather of his name had, it is said, been
cradled in a Royal Palace in Denmark. And, even
if this be fiction, we know certainly that Robert Fitz-
Harding was firmly seated at Berkeley, a man of
power and large possessions, while the first Henry
was still wearing his crown. And from Robert, down
through the long centuries, lord has succeeded lord
at " proud Berkeley," winning coronets as Baron,
Earl, and Marquis, and mingling their blood with the
noblest strains of the age of feudalism.
Such then was my Lord of Berkeley proud of his
blood and his vast estates, and heart free on the verge
of middle-age, as he rode Gloucesterwards through the
glories of an autumn day in the year 1784; as secure,
one would have thought, as man could well be against
the pitfalls of Cupid. But in love, it is notorious that
man is seldom in greater danger than when he counts
himself most secure; and thus it proved with his Lord-
ship of Berkeley.
As he was dismounting at the door of Gloucester's
principal inn, his eyes fell on an approaching vision of
197
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
girlish grace and loveliness and remained there.
Familiar as my lord was with beauty, he had never
seen it in such a fresh and dainty guise, and yet so
modest and so unconscious of its peerlessness. The
girl who so innocently was walking to meet her fate
was no mere rustic beauty with a face of " cream and
roses." There was a distinction and grace in her
carriage which an Earl's daughter might have envied
without being able to emulate.
Her well-poised head was crowned with a wealth of
rippling brown hair; the perfect oval of her face, with
its complexion pure as a lily, was illuminated by a pair
of dark eyes, whose sweetness and tenderness their
long, curling lashes could not veil. Lips, rosy red
and exquisitively shaped into a perfect bow, with a
smile lurking at each corner; dimples which played at
hide and seek in each softly-rounded cheek; and a well-
modelled chin, eloquent of character such, in the cold
medium of print, was Mary Cole when first the eyes
of Lord Berkeley fell upon her in a Gloucester street.
As the middle-aged Earl rode homeward through
the dusk of that October evening the lovely face of
which he had caught such a brief glimpse was ever
floating before him. Try as he would, he could not
escape it. It haunted his dreams that night, and
pursued him in his waking hours in the days that
followed, until he realised that he could know no rest
198
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
until he had seen it again and again; until, in fact, he
had made it his own.
How he returned to Gloucester; how he made the
acquaintance of the owner of that tantalising, peace-
destroying face, and discovered in her the daughter
of a red-faced, jovial butcher of the city; of the many
sweet and stolen meetings that followed, which left our
Earl more than ever a slave and more determined to
win the prize on which all his happiness now hung
of all this period of sweet wooing, and the final
winning, the story is too long to be told here.
It must suffice to say that one March day in 1785,
half a year after the first fateful meeting, Mary Cole,
the butcher's daughter, was installed as chatelaine of
Berkeley Castle
Where Berkeley's right and Berkeley's might
Did meet on Berkeley's Castle height.
The Cinderella from the butcher's shop had become
a Countess, the successor in that role of women who
were born to such proud names as de Ferrers, Lisle,
Stafford, and Mowbray.
So well does the Earl seem to have kept his secret
that, although Berkeley Castle is but twenty miles
distant from Gloucester, none of his high-placed neigh-
bours, from the Duke of Beaufort downwards, appears
to have known of the identity of the new Countess with
Mary Cole, the butcher's daughter. He had led her
199
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
to the altar as " Miss Tudor," a high-sounding name
enough; and although there was naturally much specu-
lation as to her antecedents, all suspicion was quickly
disarmed by the graciousness and simple dignity with
which she played her new and exalted part.
Thus passed eleven ideally happy years, during
which the peasant Countess bore four sons to her lord,
and moved among her husband's noble friends as if
she had been cradled in a castle. Then, to the amaze-
ment of the world, the Earl once more led the
Countess, and the mother of his children, to the altar;
and with every circumstance of publicity made her his
wife for the second time. What was the meaning of
this singular proceeding? Surely it could only mean
that the Earl and his " lady " had been living all
these past years as husband and wife without the sanc-
tion of the Church! Such were the questions and
speculations that ran from mouth to mouth among the
scandalmongers in Gloucestershire, and far beyond the
limits of the county. But to all such rumours the Earl
turned a smiling and inscrutable face. The only
explanation he vouchsafed was that " as his first
marriage had been, for reasons of his own, secret, he
had thought it well to repeat the ceremony in as public
a manner as possible."
In the face of such indifference and such calm
assurance, the voice of calumny could not long persist;
200
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
and whatever doubts and secret speculations might
remain, the Countess still held her head as high as
ever, and played the part of chatelaine of Berkeley
Castle as if no doubt had ever been thrown on her title.
Fourteen more years of happy life awaited my lord
and my lady during which three more sons and two
daughters came to the castle nursery before the Earl,
now full of years, died one August day in 1810; and by
his death introduced a new and startling scene in the
drama of his life-romance.
When his eldest son, " William Fitzhardinge
Berkeley, commonly called Viscount Dursley," pre-
sented his petition to be called to the House of Peers
as sixth Earl of Berkeley, it became necessary to prove
his legitimacy to establish the alleged secret
marriage at Berkeley in the year 1785; and this proved
to be no easy matter.
It is true that the late Earl had solemnly affirmed
in his last will and testament that the marriage of 1785
had actually been celebrated in private in Berkeley
Church; but this declaration, in the absence of proofs,
could not be allowed to determine such an important
matter as the title to a seat in the House of Lords.
Lord Dursley's petition was referred by the Regent
to a committee of the House of Peers; and an enquiry
was instituted which brought strange things to light.
Distinguished counsel were engaged on both sides, and
201
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
a searching investigation was made into the ante-
cedents of the Countess and the story of her two
marriages.
In vain Sir Samuel Romilly, the most astute pleader
of his day, protested, " You have the declaration of
the dead Earl with regard to his first marriage to the
Countess. You have also her ladyship's evidence of
this marriage, establishing it to the minutest detail;
and, as final and conclusive proof, you have the entry
of the marriage in the register of Berkeley Parish
Church/'
The evidence of the marriage as given by the
Countess seemed indeed conclusive in itself. There
had been present at the ceremony, which took place
early in the morning of March soth, 1785, five persons
the officiating clergyman, the bridegroom and bride,
and two witnesses, one of whom had signed his name
' W. Tudor." The other witness, one Barnes, was
not to be found probably he was dead, as the alleged
ceremony had taken place more than a quarter of a
century earlier. But " W. Tudor " was available to
give his evidence; and he proved to be none other than
a brother of the bride, who had, for the occasion,
assumed the name " Tudor," the name in which, it
will be remembered, his sister was said to have
appeared at the altar.
In addition to the evidence of the Countess and her
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
brother, who, in their different characters of principal
and witness, swore that the Berkeley marriage had
taken place, there was produced the Register of Banns
which contained an entry of the publication of
the banns in writing which was admitted to be that of
the officiating clergyman.
So far, the claimant's case seemed unimpeachable.
But as the case against his claim was unfolded, a very
different complexion was put on it. When the
marriage-register was produced, the required entry was
there beyond question. But instead of being found
on a page of the register, it appeared on a slip of paper
or parchment which had been placed between two pages
of the register, pasted together, and had thus, evidently
for years, evaded inspection and examination.
Moreover, the widow of the officiating clergyman,
who was dead, declared that the entry was not, to the
best of her belief, in her late husband's handwriting;
thus pointing to the conclusion that, although the
banns had been legally published, the marriage had
not been celebrated, and that the entry in the marriage-
register was a forgery. In the face of such evidence,
the solemn declaration of the dying Earl and the sworn
statements of the Countess and her brother naturally
carried little weight.
To place the matter still further beyond doubt, the
Countess's mother who had lived to see one daughter
203
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
wedded to an Earl ; another the wife of a General ; and
the third married to a Baring, member of a family
which has added four noble houses to our Peerage
point-blank repudiated the evidence of her daughter.
And, fatal oversight, in the register recording the later
and public nuptials the Earl had declared himself a
" bachelor," and his bride, a " spinster." Thus,
under the searchlight of the House of Lords' enquiry,
the flimsiness of the claimant's case stood pitilessly
revealed; and his claim to a seat among the Lords was
declared to be not established.
The conclusion of this strange romance can be told
in few words. Lord Dursley, thus deprived of his
legitimacy and his titles, was reduced to the rank of
a Commoner. The castle and broad acres, however,
were his; and as a man of vast wealth, and the most
important, except the Duke of Beaufort, in all
Gloucestershire, he spent the next score of years as
Colonel Berkeley, living in regal style in his castle, a
patron of the Turf, and a famous huntsman; and in
London as a man of fashion and Society, haunting the
green-rooms of the theatres and the gambling saloons
of St. James's.
In 1831 he was raised to the Peerage as Baron
Segrave, and thus found his way at last to a seat in
the Lords, whose door had been so long barred against
him; and, ten years later, he recovered his lost rank
204
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
of Earl when Lord Melbourne, as fitting tribute to a
Whig stalwart who had five seats in the Commons at
his disposal, commended him to Queen Victoria for
a patent of Peerage as Earl Fitzhardinge.
The Earldom of Berkeley, during all these years,
had belonged by right to the fifth son of Mary Cole
and her Earl, Thomas Moreton Fitzhardinge, the first-
born child of the legal union; but, with praiseworthy,
if Quixotic, self-denial, he persistently refused to wear
a coronet, the acceptance of which would cast an asper-
sion on his mother's virtue and his dead father's fair
fame. He preferred to live and die a Commoner;
and, as he never married, the Earldom, the succession
to which had brought to light one of the most romantic
dramas in the story of our Peerage, passed to a cousin,
whose son is the Earl of to-day.
205
CHAPTER XXI
TWO MADCAP MAIDS OF HONOUR
AMONG the many ladies fair and frail who have played
their romantic parts in the drama of the Peerage
from La Belle Stuart, who allied the artlessness of a
child to the wiles of a finished coquette, to that merry
madcap, Frances Jennings none of them were better
equipped by nature for the conquest of hearts than two
of the Maids of Honour who danced their way through
the dismal Court of the first of our Georges. Surely,
never did sprightly maidens find themselves in a more
dreary and chilling environment than in the Court over
which the lethargic, beer-guzzling George and his
mistress, the grim-faced, gaunt, angular Von Schulen-
burg presided, and in which youth and beauty were an
offence, and high spirits a crime.
Picture for a moment the life of a Maid of Honour
in this transplanted German Court, as described
by Pope. ' To eat Westphalian ham in a morning,
ride over hedges and ditches on borrowed hacks, come
home in the heat of the day in a fever, and with a red
mark on the forehead from an uneasy hat. As soon
as they can wipe off the sweat of the day, they must
simper an hour in the Princess's apartment; from
206
THE HONBLE MARY BELLENDEN
AFTERWARDS
MRS. CAMPBELL
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
thence to dinner with what appetite they may and
after that, till midnight, walk, talk, work, or think as
they please. I can easily believe," adds Pope, " no
lone house in Wales, with a mountain and a rookery,
is more contemplative than this Court. 5 '
Such was the Court and such the life to which Mary
Bellenden, younger daughter of John Lord Bellenden,
was transported straight from the schoolroom a pretty
little madcap, brimful of health and irrepressible
spirits, equally ready to box a too forward Page's ears
and to pull the chair from under the august and acidu-
lated Schulenburg herself.
No wonder the sober-sided German courtiers were
aghast at Mary Bellenden's pranks, of which a poet
of the time gives this inkling :
But Bellenden we needs must praise,
Who, as down the stairs she jumps,
Sings, " Over the hills and far away,"
Despising doleful dumps.
But even the most doleful of Teutonic dumps were
powerless against such impishness allied to such
radiant virginal loveliness. " Her face and person,"
says Walpole, who had ever an eye to a pretty maid,
" were charming; lively she was almost to etourdene;
and so agreeable she was that I never heard her men-
tioned afterwards by one of her contemporaries who
did not prefer her as the most perfect creature they
ever knew." Such was " Smiling Mary, soft and fair
as down," who brought sunshine into George I.'s
207
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
gloomy Court and stirred its sluggish waters as they
had never been stirred before.
Mary Bellenden's twinkling feet and merry
laughter had not long disturbed the peace of the
Whitehall Court before she had thawed the most frigid
of German hearts. Even Schulenburg, the " May-
pole Duchess," condescended to pinch her cheeks and
to give her an approving pat on the head. George was
tempted to leave his beer-pots and the company of his
" unspeakable Turks " to bask in her sunshine, and
pay clumsy court to her; while the Prince of Wales
was her very slave, ready to join in her pranks and
practical jokes, and to laugh when he in turn was made
the victim of them.
But King and courtiers the little minx treated with
equally tantalising indifference. She would flirt with
them, tease them, laugh at them, but not an ear would
she lend to any serious advances. One day, we are
told, the Prince, when sitting by her side, " took out
his purse and counted his money over and over again.
The giddy Bellenden at last lost her patience, and
cried out, c Sir, I cannot bear it! If you count your
money any more I will go out of the room. ' The chink
of the gold," says Walpole, " did not tempt her any
more than the person of his Royal Highness."
But though crowns and coronets alike failed to
dazzle the Maid of Honour, her heart was quick to
answer to the voice of true love, even when uttered by
208
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
a plain, untitled gentleman; and while she was still in
her 'teens she gladly gave her hand to Colonel Camp-
bell, Groom of the King's Bedchamber, who had lost
his heart to her when first she set foot in Whitehall.
That she might some day wear the Coronet of a
Duchess (her husband, indeed, succeeded to the Duke-
dom of Argyll, but only after he had mourned her loss
a quarter of a century) had no weight with her. She
was ideally happy with her husband in the country life
he loved, far remote from the glamour of Courts.
We get a brief glimpse of this idyllic, if bucolic, life
in a letter she wrote to her friend, Mrs. Howard. " I
have four fat calves," she wrote one day in 1723, " two
fat hogs, fit for killing, twelve promising black pigs,
four white sows, ten young chickens, three fine geese,
sitting with thirteen eggs under each all this, with
rabbits and pigeons, and carp in plenty, beef and
mutton. Now, Mrs. Howard, if you have a mind to
stick your knife into anything I have named, say so! "
Thus, prosaically, but supremely happily, the little
madcap of George's Court spent her few remaining
years, until unkind Death claimed her, before she had
seen her fortieth birthday. She left behind her four
sons and a daughter, the latter finding a husband in
the Earl of Ailesbury.
Less happy was the fate of " Molly Lepel,"
another Maid of Honour whose beauty and gaiety also
brightened the Court of the first George; and who to
209
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
personal charms as great as those of Mary Bellenden
added a witty tongue, a clever brain, and a refinement
all her own. Molly Lepel came of no noble English
stock. Her father was a Pomeranian, who came to
England with George's " menagerie " as Page of
Honour to the new King; and, entering the Army,
rose to the rank of Brigadier-General.
Von Lepel's beautiful daughter had barely seen her
fourteenth birthday when she was taken from her books
to play her part on the dull stage of the Court life;
and, like Mary Bellenden, to shock the proprieties by
her light-hearted pranks and romps. She, in her turn,
soon had a small army of lovers at her feet, from the
dissolute Prince of Wales to Sir Robert Walpole, who
would gladly have made her his wife though he was
almost old enough to be her father. But Molly only
laughed at the wooing of the burly, hard-drinking, fox-
hunting Sir Robert and the indelicate advances of the
Prince. The only one of her many wooers who found
favour in her eyes was the handsomest, and most con-
temptible, of them all John Lord Hervey, the
biggest dandy of his day, and also the most
effeminate.
My Lord Hervey must have cut a very brilliant
figure in those days of his dandyism in his straw-
berry-coloured coat, his laced waistcoat, and black
velvet breeches. Fine Mechlin lace adorned shirt-
bosom and wrists; he wore red-heeled shoes with
210
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
brilliant buckles, and gold-clocked stockings rolled up
over the knees. His flowing peruke with its long
queue was drenched with perfume and powder; and
when he took the air in the Mall he left behind him a
fragrant wake of musk, civet, or orange-water. A
sword and a snuff-box with a mirror concealed in its
lid completed the equipment of this Prince of " Pretty
Fellows," who caught the wayward fancy of the Maid
of Honour.
That Lord Hervey was handsome beyond his
fellows, that his figure was a model of elegance, and
his raiment unrivalled in its gorgeousness, his enemies
could not deny. He was, too, a man of wit and high
culture; but of real manliness he had as little as a
popinjay. In Court circles he was known as " Lady
Fanny." Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, who
frankly despised and hated him, described him as " the
most wretched profligate man that ever was born,
besides ridiculous." His profligacy had, indeed, for
years been the scandal of the town, which was none
too easily shocked in those days by amours even the
most flagrant. He was, in fact, when he wooed and
won Mistress Lepel, the dainty, winsome, witty Maid
of Honour, a worn-out roue, concealing behind a
flaunting exterior a craven heart.
But, poor creature as my Lord Hervey was, he was
the only man on whom Molly Lepel cared to smile;
and her love remained undimmed to his last hour, when
211
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
he carried " a painted face and toothless head " to a
discreditable grave. So infamous was he that he was
ready to barter his wife's charms for his own advance-
ment. It was at her husband's instigation that she,
who had hitherto been a pattern of propriety, schemed
her utmost to take the place of the Duchess of Kendal
in King George's favour; and she played her cards
with such skill and success that the " Maypole,"
alarmed for her supremacy, induced the King's
Ministers to " buy her off " with a douceur of 4,000,
every penny of which went into Lord Hervey's pocket
to be squandered on his lights o' love.
It is little wonder that such a cur fell under the lash
of Pope's most scathing satire. " That thing of silk,
that mere white curd of asses' milk," must have
quailed when he read the poet's scorn in the most
terrible lines ever penned by that venomous satirist:
Amphibious thing ! that acting either part,
The trifling head or the corrupted heart ;
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed,
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest ;
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Of this " painted child of dirt that stinks and
stings " (to quote Pope again) we are told, in his own
words, that he " never takes wine or malt drink, only
water and mild tea two days a week he ventures on
the tender white meat of a chicken for dinner; for
212
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
breakfast, dry biscuit and green tea; for supper, bread
and water no butter and no salt." No wonder the
miserable wreck of a man was driven to use paint to
" soften his ghastly appearance.'* And yet to the
last his painted face and clever tongue retained their
power to hypnotise almost every woman who came
under their spell, from the Princess Caroline to Lady
Mary Wortley Montagu.
Mated though she was to this pitiful apology for
a man, Molly Lepel seems to have been reasonably
happy. Certainly she presented a smiling face to the
world, and continued unchecked her career of con-
quest. Pope, while scarifying her husband, grew
eloquent over her " merit, beauty, and vivacity ";
Voltaire was proud to be her slave, and declared him-
self her lover in the only verses he ever wrote in our
tongue :
Hervey, would you know the passion
You have kindled in my breast?
* # ^ # #: # #
In my silence see the lover
True love is best by silence known ;
In my eyes you'll best discover
All the power of your own.
Even when age had robbed her of her charms, Lady
Louisa Stuart wrote of her: " She must have been
singularly captivating when young, gay, and hand-
some; and never was there so perfect a model of the
finely-polished, highly-bred, genuine woman of
fashion."
213
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Thus, the ex-Maid of Honour lived with her
despicable husband, a loyal wife and loving mother
of his children, until his death in 1743, when she
vowed, in her sorrow, that she could never be happy
again. " Yet," she bravely added, " I will be as
little miserable as possible, and will make use of the
reason I have to soften, not to aggravate, my
affliction."
The rest of her years she spent chiefly at her beauti-
ful country home, Ickworth Park, tending her roses
and entertaining her many friends and admirers. Her
last days were clouded by terrible suffering, which she
bore with a courage and patience that amazed her
friends; and she carried a brave heart to the grave.
Among her last words were these, addressed to a
clerical friend: " 'Tis not death that I fear, but it is
the way to it. It is the struggles, the last convulsions
that I dread; for when once they are over, I don't
question but to rise to a new and better life."
Thus, twenty-five years after the death of that
" thing of silk and asses' milk," her husband, came to
her rest Molly Lepel, the second of the two Maids of
Honour whose beauty and merry pranks had stirred
the Court of the first George to its sluggish depths; and
who had turned their backs on it to seek and in one
case at least, to find the happiness that comes to true
love.
214
CHAPTER XXII
A NOBLE DEGENERATE
THE noble house of Wemyss has carried an unsullied
shield through seven centuries, since its founder, John,
grandson of Gill-Michael, fourth Earl of Fife, first
bore its name ; and the pity is that its blood was ever
tarnished by such an ignoble strain as came to its sixth
lord from the veins of Colonel Francis Charteris,
whom Arbuthnot stigmatised in the most scathing
epitaph ever penned as " the most unworthy of all the
descendants of Adam " ; a man " who persisted, in
spite of age and infirmity, in the practice of every
human vice, excepting prodigality and hypocrisy; his
insatiable avarice exempting him from the first, and
his matchless impudence from the second."
That Francis Charteris deserved quite such sweep-
ing condemnation may be open to doubt ; that he was
a pastmaster of many of the worst vices, his life-story
makes only too manifest. He was a human pervert
of the worst type, a man who never chose the straight
path if he could reach his goal by tortuous and for-
bidden ways.
There was nothing in his antecedents to explain
this vicious strain in Charteris's blood. He was a
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
member of an ancient and honourable family which,
at his birth, had been settled on its Haddingtonshire
lands for four centuries of high repute. His mother
was the daughter of a noble house; and through his
father, as through her, he was blood-kin to half the
nobility north of the Tweed. It was his misfortune,
no doubt, that he was cradled in the licentious days of
the second Charles, and that contamination came to
him, at a most susceptible age, from the Merry
Monarch's lascivious Court.
In addition to his birth, Nature had dowered him
with uncommon physical qualities. He was, we are
told, tall, elegant, of courtly manners, and highly
accomplished. The road was clear to high and
honourable places, had he but chosen to take it ; but at
its threshold he elected to follow the devious and
shady paths which always seemed to allure him.
As a youth he had a rare opportunity of winning
laurels with his sword as an ensign in Marlborough's
army in Belgium. But such a strenuous and danger-
ous way to fame was not to his liking. He preferred
the card-table to all the laurels Mars could give him ;
and here he found a congenial field for his tastes and
gifts. Before long he had stripped his brother officers
of all the money they possessed ; and such gains as he
did not squander in dissipation he magnanimously
lent to his victims at a hundred per cent, interest.
216
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Such a state of things, coupled as it was with more
than a suspicion of foul play, could not long escape
notice. The young subaltern was arrested by Marl-
borough's orders, tried by court-martial, and ignomini-
ously drummed out of the regiment, leaving his
broken sword behind him.
Nothing daunted by his disgrace, Charteris quickly
found a new opening in the army in Flanders; and
so ingratiated himself in the favour of his superiors
that he was despatched to England carrying a large
sum of money with which to raise recruits. On his
way across the sea, however, he yielded again to the
lure of the cards, and was so thoroughly fleeced that
he landed at Harwich without a penny in his pocket.
In spite of his empty purse, he dined expensively
at the best inn in the town, and retired to rest in the
happiest frame of mind. Early next morning he
rang his bell violently, called for the landlord, and,
in a great state of rage, declared that, during the night,
someone had stolen his breeches, and, with them, sixty
golden guineas. In vain did the terrified innkeeper
protest his ignorance and innocence. Charteris raged
so violently and threatened such vengeance and public
exposure, that the poor man was at last driven, not
only to replace the missing garment, but to borrow
and liand over sixty guineas thankful even at such
a price to be rid of the " mad Englishman," and little
217
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
dreaming that his guest had himself burnt his breeches
during the night !
Thus supplied with his ill-gotten gold Charteris
made his way to his parents' roof, where he was re-
ceived with open arms as a returned hero ; and a little
later we find him in the thick of the gaieties of Edin-
burgh, a welcome guest in all the most exclusive
houses of the Scottish capital. This was an oppor-
tunity of re-establishing his fortunes not to be missed.
Once he was invited to play cards with the Duchess
of Queensberry; and, thanks to a mirror in front of
which he contrived to place his hostess, he won
'; 3,000 of her money without raising the ghost of a
suspicion against his honour.
In another venture he was less fortunate. He was
caught in the act of using loaded dice ; was seized by
his designed victims, stripped of his clothes, and had
to submit to the humiliation of standing in a corner of
the room during the rest of the evening. In spite,
however, of such experiences and his tarnished name,
he was able to woo and wed the pretty daughter of Sir
Alexander Swinton ; and, before Edinburgh got quite
too hot for comfort, he carried his bride and his
knavish gifts to a fresh field of enterprise in London.
Here he entertained lavishly, and quickly qualified as
a social favourite and leader, robbing his guests at the
card-table as opportunity served.
218
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
He still hankered after the Army, however; and in
1710 we find him spending three thousand of his ill-
gotten guineas in the purchase of a company in the
Foot Guards, thus finding new scope for his knavery.
He kept his company at half strength, and drew pay
for the whole, and pocketed the balance; he also ex-
torted large sums from his men before he would grant
them a discharge. In these and a score of similar
ways he lined his pockets richly, until his career was
brought to a full stop. His peccadilloes were re-
ported to Parliament; a committee of enquiry was
appointed ; and the adventurous Captain paid for his
vagaries by having to listen on his knees to the
Speaker's severe censure, and by a sentence of dis-
missal from the Army.
His career as a " soldier " was not, however, closed,
even by such an ignominious experience. With the
words of the Speaker still fresh in his memory he won
the rank of Colonel from a Colonel Holmes at the
card-table; and, a few years later, he was playing a
double part in the Pretender's rebellion in Lancashire,
ready to sell his allegiance to whichever party was
prepared to offer the best terms for it. All the advan-
tage he seems to have secured was that he was allowed
to take from the beaten Jacobites thirty horses to re-
place, those of which, he alleged, the insurgents had
robbed him at his castle of Hornby.
219
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
As there was no more plunder to be won with his
venal sword, the Colonel once more returned to the
card-table, where his curious conceptions of honour-
able play frequently got him into trouble. Once a
young nobleman, from whom he had won a large sum,
gave him a sound thrashing, and vowed he would not
stop until the money was returned. " Go on/' gasped
Charteris between the blows. " I'll take as much as
you like, but not a penny will I refund." On another
occasion, in a brawl with another of his dupes at
Edinburgh, he settled the affair by biting his victim's
nose off !
Not content with his spoil of the gaming-table, he
reaped a rich harvest by shady dealing in the South
Sea Stock. And as fast as his dishonest gold flowed
in he invested it in lands or stocks, until his wealth
assumed large proportions. He became lord of
Hornby Castle; he bought large estates in Scotland,
from one of which he blossomed into " Charteris of
Amisfield " ; and to them he added fat manors in
Lancashire. Our bogus Colonel was now one of the
great landowners and richest men in Great Britain.
It would have been well if he had been content to
enjoy in seemly ways his riches, however shamefully
acquired. His memory would have been less un-
savoury than it is in the nostrils of posterity. Sated
now with the pleasures and profits of the card-table,
220
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
he sought another indulgence for his depraved tastes.
He had, it is true, already won an unenviable reputa-
tion as a rake ; but there were many more laurels to be
won in this field, and he determined to add them to his
crown of infamy. One shameless intrigue followed
another in quick succession; wherever his baleful
steps took him he left behind him a wake of ruined
lives, until he became the most hated and feared man
from John o' Groats to Land's End.
He seldom accepted hospitality which he did not
basely betray. On one occasion, when a kind-hearted
Yorkshire rector offered him the shelter of his home
until he recovered from a slight accident on the road,
Charteris repaid his Good Samaritan by eloping with
one of his daughters, only to abandon her under
shameful circumstances. The very house which shel-
tered his wife and daughter he made the scene of dis-
graceful orgies, to find a parallel to which we must go
back to the midnight revels of the " Regent of the
Roues."
So enraged was public opinion against Charteris's
shameless doings that on one occasion a furious mob
besieged his house in Hanover-square, broke all the
windows, and clamoured fiercely for his blood and the
release of his victims. After one of his escapades,
more daring and heartless than usual, he was arrested ;
and, in spite of the eloquent pleading of his counsel,
221
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
was sentenced to death. But before his well-merited
sentence could be executed, family influence had
obtained a pardon from the King.
Worn out now with excesses, he was brought almost
to death's door by a serious illness; and for a time,
like the " Devil when he was sick," turned his
thoughts to piety and atonement. He had actually
engaged an architect to build twenty-four almshouses
for his natural children, when recovery set in, and with
it a longing to resume his wickedness. To complete
his restoration to health he went to Aix la Chapelle
to try the fashionable cure ; and here he " played his
cards " so well that he is said to have added another
thousand a year to his already large income.
Back in London, his health now repaired for a fresh
lease of licence, he resumed his interrupted life of so-
called " pleasure " ; but had scarcely made his first
adventure when he found himself in serious trouble.
As the result of a grave charge made against him by
a girl named Ann Bond, whom he had inveigled into
his service, he was arrested and brought to trial at the
Old Bailey in February, 1730. A verdict of guilty
was recorded against him, and once more he listened
to the death sentence.
His plight was now pitiful. Loaded with irons, sick
in body, and despairing in mind, this lord of castles
and many manors was at last face to face with a dis-
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
graceful and seemingly inevitable death. There was,
it is true, still one slight hope. His case had been
referred to the Privy Council ; his powerful relatives,
including his daughter's husband, the Earl of
Wemyss, were moving heaven and earth to secure his
pardon; but for once the felon in his cell utterly lost
both heart and hope. Once more, however, he was
destined to escape the fate he had so well earned.
The Privy Council, thanks largely to the eloquent
pleading of Charteris's counsel, Duncan Forbes,
advised the King to pardon the miscreant; and he
was again a free man. The first time he ventured out
for an airing, his carriage was stopped by a mob of
roughs, who dragged him out and gave him such a
severe drubbing that he decided to wipe the dust of
London finally off his feet.
His race was now nearly run. Broken in health,
he became so ill that the end was only a matter of
days. Nemesis had at last overtaken him; and as
he lay on his deathbed, tortured by fears for his
future rather than by remorse for his past, he repeat-
edly " offered 30,000 to anyone who would assure
him there was no such place as hell." To the minister
who was summoned to the dying man's bedside he
refused to listen, fearful that he would expect some
payment for his services. When his daughter, Lady
Wemyss, assured him that the parson's services were
223
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
gratuitous he said, with a sigh of relief, " Well, then,
let us have a flourish from him."
It was during a terrific storm, amid the crashing of
thunder and the tumult of the elements, that Char-
teris's soul left the debauched temple of his body to
appear before a tribunal from which there could be
neither appeal nor escape. But even death was
powerless to shield him from the world he had out-
raged. As the hearse conveying his body to its last
resting-place passed through an avenue of jeering
men and women, it was pelted with filth and garbage ;
and when at last the coffin was lowered into its vault
in the church of Greyfriars, in Edinburgh, " the car-
cases of dead cats and dogs were flung in to bear it
company."
By a settlement, Charteris's wealth was left to his
daughter's second son, Francis, who, as sixth Earl of
Wemyss, transmitted to his descendants a name asso-
ciated with more infamy than any other in our
Peerage, but, happily, none of the vicious tendencies
that made it infamous.
224
CHAPTER XXIII
THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF AN EARL
IN the middle years of the Second George, England
was gasping with amazement and shedding sympa-
thetic tears over the pages of a pamphlet entitled
" The Adventures of an Unfortunate Young Noble-
man," which unfolded a story so incredible, so seem-
ingly impossible, that the most daring writer of fiction
would have shrunk from presenting it in the guise of
romance. The hero of this strange story had crowded
into his short life more vicissitudes, more amazing ex-
periences, than had probably fallen to the lot of any
man who ever lived certainly than had ever found
a place in Peerage history.
This singular drama opens in the street of an Eng-
lish village. A ragged, barefooted boy, little more
than a child, is the centre of a mob of rough village
lads, who are raining cowardly blows on him, and call-
ing him every vile name that leaps to their lips. " I
am no ' dog ' or * scoundrel, 3 " gasped the white-faced,
indignant boy amid a shower of blows and abuse. " I
am better than any of you, for my father is a lord ; and,
when I am a man, I shall be a lord, too," a statement
225
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
which was greeted with shrieks of laughter, and still
heavier blows for " my lord," the beggar.
Fortunately, at this moment the door of a neigh-
bouring cottage opened, and an old woman, emerging,
rescued the boy from his tormentors and dragged him
into safety. " Tell me," she asked, when he had re-
covered a little, " why they called you ' a lord/ "
" Madam," was the startling answer, " my father is
Lord Altham, and my mother is Lady Altham; but
she has left the Kingdom, and they say I shall never
see her again." " But who tells you all this ?" asked
the good Samaritan. " I know it very well," the boy
replied. " I lived in a great house once, and had a
footman; and then was carried to a great school, and
was reckoned the head boy there, and had the finest
clothes. Afterwards I was carried to another school,
and there they abused me sadly, because they said
my father would not pay for me." Such was the story
told by the " beggar-boy " to his rescuer ; and, in-
credible as it seemed, every word of it was true.
The tattered child of the bare feet was in fact James
Annesley, son of Arthur, fourth Baron Altham, and
of Mary, daughter of the Duke of Buckingham and
Normandy the descendant of a long line of
knightly and noble Annesleys, which reached un-
broken to the days of the Conqueror. During his
earliest years this son of a lord and grandson of a
226
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Duke had been cradled in the luxury of his rank, until
an estrangement between his parents and his father's
reckless extravagance had wrought a tragic revolution
in his life. He became an object not only of indiffer-
ence, but of hatred to his father, especially as his
existence was a barrier to the raising of money to feed
the Baron's extravagance. He was, as he said, re-
moved from the great school where he wore the
" finest clothes " to another, where, as his father re-
fused to pay his fees, he was treated with indignity,
and made to perform the most menial offices.
He was " cruelly beaten, and while other boys were
at their school exercises, he was employed in drawing
water, cleaning boots and knives, or some other ser-
vile office." For two years he bore this life of humili-
ation until he could bear it no longer. Then, in
desperation, he ran away, in search of the father who
had so cruelly abandoned him. For weeks he wan-
dered aimlessly in his quest, begging his bread and
sleeping under hedges, in barns or church porches,
until he was, as we have seen, rescued by the good
Samaritan from the brutality of the village lads.
Although he knew it not, the boy's wandering steps
had carried him to the neighbourhood of his father's
house ; and the woman who had given him the shelter
of her roof and the generous hospitality lost no time
in communicating with the Baron. His lordship,
227
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
however, declared that the boy was no son of his, and
refused even to see him.
A few day's later the boy's uncle, the Hon. Richard
Annesley, made his appearance, and asked to see him.
" What name is this you take upon you ?" he asked in
a stern voice. " I take none upon me, sir," was the
answer, " but what I brought into the world with me.
Nobody will say but I am the son of Baron Altham."
" By whom ?" demanded the gentleman. " By his
wife, the Baroness Altham." " Then," exclaimed the
uncle, " you are a bastard, for your mother was a
reprobate." " If I was a man," indignantly answered
the child, with tears in his eyes, " you should not use
my mother or me thus."
" Though you are no child of my brother and no
nephew of mine," the visitor at last condescended to
say, " I will see that you are properly provided for."
And a few days later the boy was taken from his bene-
factress and placed on board a ship bound for Pennsyl-
vania, with instructions to the captain to sell him, on
arrival to the highest bidder. Over the horrors of the
voyage to a distant land and to slavery it is well to draw
the curtain. By captain and sailors alike he was
treated with every cruelty and humiliation that a
fiendish ingenuity could devise; and when he was
driven to tears and protests, he was confined in the hold
of the vessel.
228
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
When the ship at last reached its destination he was
promptly sold as slave to a rich planter in Newcastle
County, called Drummond; and thus commenced a
new life of horrors at the very time that his father
died, and his uncle succeeded to the Barony of
Altham. To this title were added, ten years later, the
Earldom of Anglesey, the Viscounty of Valentia and
the Barony of Montnorris, to all of which the planta-
tion slave was the rightful heir.
Picture now our young Baron, the assured succes-
sor to the family Earldom, the slave of a cruel task-
master, herding with his fellow slaves, in daily terror
of the lash, and toiling long hours daily at the felling
of timber, a task far beyond his boyish strength, in a
pestilential air. " The horrors of this time," he wrote
in later and happier years, " I cannot recall without a
shudder. It was an Inferno, relieved only by the
kindness of an aged female slave, who was a veritable
mother to me. For four years, until her death, she
watched over me, shielded and cared for me, teaching
me all she knew of education. For a year after her
death I bore the drudgery, the daily oppression and
the degradation. Then I could bear it no more. I
fled, carrying with me a hedging-bill for my protec-
tion. For days I wandered, mostly foodless, in the
woods. Then occurred a dramatic incident which
nearly proved my undoing."
229
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
He was lying one evening, footsore and weary, at
the foot of a tree, when he heard the sound of horses
galloping in his direction. Soon there came in sight
two mounted men, one of whom had a girl mounted
behind him. When they had approached within a
few yards of his resting place they alighted and spread
a meal on the grass, and proceeded to partake of it.
The sight of food proving too strong a temptation to
the famished young Baron, he revealed himself ; and,
after telling his story, was invited to share the repast,
and to accompany them on their journey to the sea,
where they proposed to embark for Holland.
Before, however, they had proceeded a mile on their
resumed journey, they were overtaken by a pursuing
party; and after a brief and fierce fight, they were
taken prisoners, and lodged in the nearest gaol.
There the Baron learned that his companions were
fugitives from justice that they had robbed a wealthy
planter, husband of the lady of the pillion, who had
taken the opportunity to escape with her lover. For
five weeks the Baron remained in durance ; he saw the
three companions of his adventure executed ; and him-
self narrowly escaped the same fate, only to be handed
over to his old tyrant and master into a slavery more
horrible than before his flight.
Thus, when liberty seemed almost within his grasp
he found himself consigned to a bondage so cruel and
230
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
harsh that the law intervened in his favour, and com-
pelled his master to sell him to another. After three
years of suffering in his new servitude he again
escaped, and this time had actually come within sight
of the sea and a friendly ship, when he was again
captured, and sentenced to five years of slavery, in
place of the one year that remained of his term.
This second blow seems to have crushed the young
nobleman's spirits. He fell, we are told, into a deep
melancholy, and became so seriously ill that his
master, fearing to lose his property, took him into his
house and consigned him to the care of his wife and
daughter a condition which, however pleasant for a
time, brought new trouble on his head.
The planter's daughter lost her heart so completely
to the handsome young invalid that she knew no hap-
piness except by his side; and, throwing all modesty
aside, she implored him to return her affection. This
in itself was a sufficiently embarrassing position for a
slave, however noble, to be placed in; but it was
aggravated by rivalry of a very serious nature. One
of his fellow slaves, a young Indian maid of great
beauty, conceived an equally violent passion for the
Baron. " She, too, made no secret of her love. She
vowed she would marry him when his time of servi-
tude had expired, and that she would work so hard
for him as to save him the expense of two slaves."
231
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Was ever youth placed in such an awkward dilemma
the object of a violent attachment to his master's
only daughter and his master's slave ? In vain did he
protest indifference to both. Each was consumed by
the fires of jealousy, each was of an equally fierce and
vindictive nature and tragedy was in the air.
One day when the Baron was restored to health,
Maria, the planter's daughter, was making her way to
a distant field where he was working, when she met her
rival. Angry words and recriminations ensued. The
Indian maid, in a frenzy of rage, flew at Maria like a
tigress, and it was only with the utmost difficulty, and
after a fierce struggle, that the latter succeeded in
escaping with her life; while, baffled of her revenge,
the Indian girl rushed to a neighbouring river and
ended at once her love and her life.
This tragedy was followed, for the planter's
daughter, by a severe illness, during which, in her
hours of delirium, the story of her passion came to her
parents' ears, and her father, in natural alarm, de-
cided to be rid of a slave whom he by no means
desired as a son-in-law. Instead, however, of
giving him his liberty, as he promised, he sold him
to another master for the remainder of his term of
slavery.
For a time, the Baron now fell on happier days.
His new master treated him with kindness, gave him
232
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
light tasks to perform, and precious privilege
allowed him the run of his library. " These," to
quote his lordship's words, "were the only days of my
slavery on which I care to dwell ; for, compared with
all the horrors that had preceded them, it was as an
escape from hell to heaven. Unluckily, however, my
kind master died after I had been with him three
years, and again I was sold into slavery, this time to a
master in Newcastle County, almost within sight of
my first plantation.
" In the neighbourhood lived the two brothers of
Turquoise, the Indian maiden whose love for me had
had such a tragic ending; and they, I learnt, had
vowed to kill me as the cause of their sister's death.
They watched me narrowly, and, in spite of all my
caution, attacked me one day in a remote part of the
woods, and would certainly have killed me had not
some persons, in search of a runaway slave, provi-
dentially arrived on the scene and seized the would-
be assassins. As it was, I escaped with a knife-
wound on the hip, which kept me a prisoner for two
months."
Thus disaster followed on disaster. Nor was this
by any means the last. One day he chanced to over-
hear a conspiracy between his mistress and a neigh-
bour's slave to rob her husband and escape together
to Europe. Waiting until the guilty pair had
233
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
separated, he followed his mistress, told her what he
had overheard, and succeeded in persuading her to
abandon her design, promising in return that no word
of her secret should ever escape his lips. This
adventure had a strange sequel. The woman con-
ceived a strong passion for the young lord, and when
he refused to gratify it was so enraged that she tried
to poison him an attempt which was happily unsuc-
cessful.
This last experience determined Annesley to make
one more desperate bid for freedom. One Sep-
tember day, in 1740, he made his escape, and after
terrible privations and many hairbreadth escapes from
discovery by his pursuers, he reached the sea and
boarded a ship bound for Jamaica. To the captain
who had thus befriended the fugitive, he told his
singular story, with the result that, not only did it
meet with credence, but he was sent to England to
prosecute his claims to the estates and titles of which
he had been so cruelly robbed.
The rest of James Annesley's story one of the
most remarkable any man has ever survived to tell
may be told in a few words. On his arrival in Eng-
land he introduced himself to the agent of his family,
and soon succeeded in enlisting the sympathy and
help of powerful supporters. He was recognised by
the nurse of his childhood, who, the moment she saw
234
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
him, exclaimed, "That is my boy!" and flung her
arms around him in an ecstasy of joy.
Within a few months an action for ejectment was
commenced against his uncle Richard, Earl of Angle-
sey, Viscount Valentia and Baron Altham and Mont-
norris; and the cause came on for trial in the Irish
Court of Exchequer in November, 1743. During the
case the life-story of the " unfortunate young noble-
man " was unfolded to the Court, amid a breathless
silence broken only by sobs and ejaculations of sym-
pathy and wonder. In vain did the defence attempt
to prove that the claimant was illegitimate. The
evidence was overwhelming, conclusive, in his favour ;
and after fifteen days a verdict was returned for the
plaintiff.
Thus, after adventures such as outstrip all the
imagining of fiction, and after sufferings such as have
seldom fallen to the lot of man, James Annesley,
Earl, Viscount, and Baron, came at last to his own.
The family estates he took; but the titles he left to
the usurper the uncle who had been wearing a
coronet while its rightful owner was herding with
slaves on American plantations.
235
CHAPTER XXIV
THE MISER WHO REFUSED A CORONET
" THAT most puzzling of human paradoxes the
meanest man who ever lived, and also one of the most
generous, giving with prodigal hand to the stranger
while denying himself a crust." So spoke Lord
Beaconsfield of that strange freak of humanity, John
Elwes, thrice Member of Parliament for Berkshire,
a man of colossal wealth, and one of the most sordid
misers who ever drew the breath of life.
If it is asked how Elwes, the miser, finds a place
in this series of Peerage Romances the answer is ready
and conclusive. Pitiful object as he was, Elwes was
the descendant, through his mother, of a long line of
knightly and gentle ancestors, and had in his veins no
mean strain of noble blood, derived among other
sources from the Herveys, Earls of Bristol. Sir
Gervais Elwes, a famous Governor of the Tower of
London, was among his forefathers; a line of Baronets
figures on his family-tree; and he himself might have
worn a coronet had he but said " Yes " to Lord
North's offer of a Barony. Thus our miser is entitled
to a place in the romantic stories of the Peerage; and
it is safe to say that his life-story is one of the most
remarkable in its pages.
236
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
John Elwes was born " with a silver spoon in his
mouth." His father, John Meggot, was a man of
wealth and broad acres, who left behind him 100,000
when the embryo miser and M.P. was still in
the nursery; and, in later years, Elwes inherited from
his mother's brother, Sir Hervey Elwes, himself a con-
firmed miser, a quarter of a million of money, together
with a lordly seat at Stoke, in Suffolk, and large
estates. Thus, if ever a man had small excuse for
parsimony, it was John Elwes.
His boyhood and youth appear to have been quite
normal. He was educated at Westminster School; he
travelled widely, like other young men of position, and
excelled in many manly sports, especially in the
hunting-field. Indeed, until his uncle's death added
so largely to his fortune, he seems to have differed
little, if at all, from the ordinary man of wealth and
leisure.
With this accession, however, to his money-bags he
seems to have inherited his uncle's parsimonious
habits; for certainly from this time his whole character
was changed, and henceforth his chief object in life
seems to have been to save pence although he might at
the same time squander thousands. A typical story
illustrates these two strongly-contrasted sides of his
character. Lord Abingdon, one of his friends, had
made a Turf match for 7,000, but was unable to pro-
237
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
duce his stake. Without even waiting to be asked,
Elwes offered his lordship the money, which there was
a strong probability he would never see again.
On the appointed day, Elwes, accompanied by a
clergyman friend, rode to Newmarket to see the match,
starting on the long journey at seven o'clock in the
morning. At four o'clock in the afternoon, some time
after the match had been decided in Lord Abingdon's
favour, the parson, who was now ravenously hungry,
suggested to Elwes that it was time to adjourn to a
hotel for dinner. " Very true, very true," was the
answer. " I am rather hungry myself. Here, do as
I do "; and producing from his overcoat-pocket a
mildewed pancake which, he said, he had brought from
his house at Marcham two months earlier, he handed
half of it to his famished friend. And Elwes started
on the journey home, munching his two-months old
pancake and chuckling at having saved the cost of a
dinner, while risking 7,000.
On another occasion, after playing at cards the
whole night and losing some thousands of pounds, he
made his way on foot from the gilded salon in which
he had staked and lost a fortune to Smithfield Market,
to haggle over a shilling with a butcher, while trying
to sell some of his cattle, and to stay the pangs of
hunger by munching a mouldy crust.
At this time, the owner of at least 30,000 a year
238
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
was actually keeping foxhounds and a stable of hunters
(his one extravagance) on less than 300 a year an
economical feat which becomes intelligible when we
learn that he paid his huntsman who also discharged
every other duty of his household, from milking the
cows to preparing his master's breakfast the lordly
sum of five pounds yearly. But even an annual 300,
he decided, was too great an extravagance for a man
of his means; and hounds and hunters were soon
sacrificed to his passion for miserliness.
But though he could not afford this small sum for
his one pleasure, he was ready at any moment to
advance thousands to any adventurer who asked for
them, or to a friend who was in need of a loan. In
these ways he is said to have lost at least a hundred
and fifty thousand pounds. In spite, however, of his
losses, riches rolled in upon him like a torrent. His
mountain of gold grew yearly, until it approached
nearly a million pounds; and with the growth of his
wealth his miserliness kept pace. Whenever he
started on a long journey (all his travelling was done
on horseback) he would carefully choose the roads
where turnpikes were fewest; and for a day's food
would put into his pocket a couple of hard-boiled eggs,
or a few crusts, which he would eat by the roadside,
choosing for his meal a place where grass and water
were available for his horse, free of cost.
239
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
In London, we are told, he would get drenched to
the skin rather than pay a shilling for a coach; and
rather than spend a few pence on a fire, he would sit
in his wet clothes until they were dry. Nothing would
induce him to order a fresh joint from the butcher until
the last putrid remnant of its predecessor was disposed
of. He would pick up a wig from the gutter and wear
it with satisfaction; and once, when his brown coat,
which he had worn for twenty years, was too tattered
for further wear, he chose, from an old family-chest, a
full-dress green velvet coat, with slashed sleeves, in
which he strutted about, as vain as a peacock, with the
gutter- wig precariously perched on his white locks.
Among Elwes' many possessions was a great
number of houses in the West of London, which sup-
plied him with an agreeable hobby, and at the same
time with free quarters. When one of his houses
was vacated he would move into it, with a couple of
beds, two chairs, a table, and an old woman, who con-
stituted his entire household. Here, attended by his
aged domestic, he would live on his crusts and putrid
meat, with the occasional luxury of a fire made from
chips left by the carpenters or sticks picked up in the
street, until the house found a new tenant, when he
would migrate with his household goods and the old
servitor to another house that was empty.
On the rare occasions when he migrated to his seat
240
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
at Stoke his miserly habits were quite as marked. If
a window was broken, he would repair it with a piece
of brown paper. He spent his days wandering in
search of sticks and chips for his fire; and was one day
found pulling down a crow's nest for the same purpose.
During harvest-time he found his pleasure in gleaning
the corn left in his tenants' fields. One day, it is said,
he fared sumptuously on a moorhen which had been
brought out of the river by a rat; another, on the un-
digested part of a pike which had been swallowed by
a larger one ! And yet the very week after eating the
rat-provided game, he rose from a gaming-table in
London the loser of three thousand pounds!
About this time an amusing and characteristic story
is told of him. One pitch-dark night, when returning
to one of his empty houses in London, he ran so
violently against the pole of a sedan-chair that both
legs were seriously cut. In spite of his protests, a
surgeon was summoned, and Elwes was aghast at the
prospect of a bill. But even in this dilemma his
ingenuity did not fail him. He saw a way of escape.
" You know, doctor," he said, " I don't think my
legs are much hurt. You say they are. Well, I will
make this agreement. I will take one leg; you shall
take the other. You shall do just what you please with
yours; .1 will do nothing to mine. And I will wager
the amount of your bill that my leg gets well before
241
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
yours." The surgeon consented and lost his fee,
for the untended leg won by a fortnight!
A seat in Parliament was, one would think, the last
luxury such a pastmaster of parsimony would allow
himself, especially at a time when its cost was some-
times counted in tens of thousands of pounds. But
when Lord Craven offered to nominate Elwes for
Berkshire, he consented on one condition, that his
seat should cost him nothing. As a matter of fact, it
left him just eighteenpence out of pocket the price
of a dinner at Abingdon when, for once and with
much grumbling, he was obliged to desert his diet of
crusts or putrid pancakes. And for twelve years he
represented the electors of Berkshire in three succes-
sive Parliaments, without once adding a penny to the
prime extravagance of eighteenpence. On the other
side, his hand was always in his pocket to supply the
financial needs of his brother M.P.'s, until he sorrow-
fully said, " I have lost more money by lending at
Westminster than three contested elections would have
cost me."
As a legislator Elwes was a model of all the virtues,
staunchly true to his party and his conscience; and,
although he never opened his lips in the House, was
the most regular of all in his attendance. His loyalty
to his party was so conspicuous that the wits of the
Opposition declared " They had full as much reason
242
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
as the Ministry to be satisfied with Mr. Elwes, as he
never turned his coat." And he never did, although
no coat was in such need of turning or replacement.
Even his wig he finally discarded on the score of
expense since no more were to be picked up in the
street; for, said he, " it is cheaper to wear my own
hair, which, like my expenses, is small."
Mr. Elwes' parliamentary life narrowly escaped a
tragic termination at one period. He had been
missing for days, and his nephew, Colonel Timms,
grew alarmed. A long and diligent search was made
for him, and he was ultimately found in one of his
empty houses, almost at his last gasp. When he was
restored to consciousness, he explained that " an old
woman who was in the house, for some reason or other,
had not been near him; that she had herself been ill;
but he supposed she had got well and gone away."
The old woman, his migratory housekeeper, had not
gone away, as was discovered later; she was found
lifeless on an attic floor above the master she had
served so well.
When old age began to creep on the miser, strength
and reason began to fail. He grew morose and sus-
picious, and more greedy still of gold. To save
candles he would retire to bed when the light failed;
to save fire he would pace up and down his empty
rooms to infuse a little cheap warmth into his bloodless
243
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
body. He denied himself even the luxury of sheets;
and, when he fell ill at his farm at Thaydon Hall, lay
for days at the point of death without a solitary
attendant. The summer of 1788 he spent in London,
old and feeble as he was, superintending the repairs
of some of his houses in Marylebone. At four o'clock
every morning he would be on the spot, awaiting the
arrival of the workmen, and giving them a sound rating
if they were a minute late. The neighbours were
amazed at such punctuality, and one of them remarked
to the foreman, " I have never known such a punctual
man as that old carpenter of yours."
At times the old man would wander aimlessly
through the streets, until he lost himself, and had to
be conducted home by some errand-lad or stranger who
took pity on him. These good Samaritans he would
invariably dismiss on the doorstep with a courtly bow
and a word of thanks. Never did he invite them
inside, or offer a reward for their kindness.
As his end drew near his miserliness developed into
a mania. When his builder once called on him for a
small advance, he reluctantly produced five guineas,
and said, " Here is every penny I have; and how I
shall go on with such a sum of money worries me to
death. I daresay you thought I was rich now you
see how poor I am! " He spent sleepless nights
pacing up and down his bare room, crying out, " I will
244
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
keep my money, I will; nobody shall rob me of it."
On one occasion, after such a night, he went in great
trepidation to his bankers, on whom he had given a
draft for twenty pounds, to apologise for the liberty he
had taken, as he had no funds to meet the draft.
" Don't worry, Mr. Elwes," the official answered,
soothingly, " we have a balance in our hands of some-
thing over 14,000 to meet the draft."
Towards the last his memory completely left him.
Even his own relatives and friends he failed to
recognise, and greeted with shrieks of alarm and
cries of " You sha'n't have my money ! You are
robbers! " For six weeks before his death he slept
in his clothes; and one morning in November, 1789,
he was found dead in bed, fully clothed for his last
journey, with a stick in his hand, and an old dilapidated
hat, which would have discredited a scarecrow, on his
head. Of his vast wealth, which amounted to
800,000, half-a-million was left equally to two
natural sons, to whom he seems to have been devoted.
The remainder, consisting of entailed estates, went to
his nephew, Colonel Timms.
Thus died, at the age of seventy-six, " that most
puzzling of human paradoxes," John Elwes, the miser,
of whom the kindest and truest judgment to pass is
he was his own worst enemy.
245
CHAPTER XXV
THE THREE GRACES
WHEN pretty Mary Clement was cutting out patterns
and stitching small clothes in tailor Rennie's shop in
Pall Mall, in the days when the first of the Georges
was King, she indulged, no doubt, in many a day-
dream of the future that awaited her; but we may be
sure that in her rosiest dreams she never pictured a
time when a daughter of hers would be a Princess of
the Blood Royal and a favourite sister-in-law of the
King of England, and when her descendants should
wear coronets as Duke and Earls. And yet Fate had
all this in store for the low-born girl who plied her
needle daily at the bidding of the Pall Mall tailor.
For Fortune, though she had placed Mary Clement
in one of the lowliest walks of life, had dowered her
with a rare beauty of face and figure. So fair was she
that many a gallant strolling down Pall Mall would
linger for a peep at her charms through the tailor's
window, and would lie in wait for her when, her day's
work over, she walked to her poor home. But Mary
Clement was as modest and chaste as she was lovely;
and to one and all of these would-be lovers she turned
a cold and contemptuous shoulder.
There was one, however, to whom, in spite of her-
246
MARIA, COUNTESS OF WALDEGRAVE
AFTERWARDS
DUCHESS OF GLOUCESTER
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
self, she could not long be cold. In the room above
the tailor's shop lived Edward Walpole, second son
of the famous Prime Minister, a young man who had
inherited much of his father's good looks and brains,
and who, just returned from the grand tour, was lead-
ing the life of a man of rank and fashion in town. On
his way to his apartments this young gallant had
caught many a glimpse of the beautiful seamstress, her
dainty head, with its wealth of golden hair, bent indus-
triously over her work, and had been rewarded by more
than one upward glance from a pair of lovely blue eyes.
And it is little wonder that a vision so fair and so
unexpected made its impression on a heart that was
not a little susceptible to female charms.
A bow and a pleasant word in passing were followed
by stolen interviews when the tailor was not on guard,
and the spark of love was fanned into a flame which
neither of the lovers sought or cared to quench.
When news of these " carryings on " came to the ears
of the tailor's wife, she was furious; and the climax
came in a severe lecture administered to the seam-
stress. " Such shameful goings on," Mrs. Rennie
hotly declared, " could not be tolerated. No good
could come to a poor girl who encouraged attentions
from such a fine gentleman as Mr. Walpole; and she
was not going to have her house disgraced in this way.
Marys Clement must either give up her lover or leave
the house."
247
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
What could a poor girl do in such a crisis? She
burst into a flood of tears, declared that she could not
give up her lover, and forthwith ran up the stairs to his
apartments and appealed to him for protection; an
appeal to his chivalry which Edward Walpole was the
last man to resist. With his strong arm supporting
the weeping girl and her head pillowed on his breast,
he vowed that he would never desert her; that, as long
as he lived, he would be her protector and husband
in all but in name.
The next morning Mr. Rennie's shop opened, but
Mary Clement was never again seen bending over her
work, blind to the admiring glances of passing
gallants, and listening for the footsteps on the stairs of
the man she loved. For a few too brief years she was
ideally happy with her high-placed lover and
" husband." She bore him five children, of whom
her two boys died in infancy, and was herself then laid
to rest, mourned as deeply and as long by her lover
as any wife was ever mourned by her husband.
Edward Walpole had by this time become a Member
of Parliament, on his way to higher honours. He was
later dubbed a Knight of the Bath, and was made a
Privy Councillor and Chief Secretary for Ireland.
But, though still in the prime of life, one of the hand-
somest and most accomplished men in England, who
might have " picked and chosen " among the fairest
women in the land, he remained true to the memory of
248
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
his little seamstress, and found his chief pleasure in
watching his three daughters grow daily in beauty and
winsomeness. As children, their beauty and pretty
ways captivated all hearts. Horace Walpole, their
uncle, idolised his fair nieces, and his happiest
moments were spent in romping with them in his house
at Strawberry Hill. " These pretty nieces of mine/'
he wrote, " make one feel quite a boy again. They
are lovely as a dream and frolicsome as kittens; and
what merry, mad pranks we play together! "
As they grew up in all the pride of young woman-
hood their beauty was the wonder of London. " I
firmly believe," wrote one enthusiastic admirer, " that
if the three Graces of the heathen world returned to
earth, it is doubtful whether they would be more afraid
of the fair Walpoles or of the fair Gunnings as rivals."
The Gunning sisters had recently taken the London
world of fashion by storm. Horace Walpole wrote of
them as, " two Irish girls of no fortune, who make
more noise than any of their predecessors since the
days of Helen, and who are declared the handsomest
women alive." But there were many, Horace Wal-
pole among them, who vowed that not even the two
Gunnings were as supremely lovely as Maria Walpole,
whom a Royal duke declared to be " the loveliest
woman in the whole world."
But fair and fascinating as the three Walpole
beauties were, and man of distinction as their father
249
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
was, the exclusive circle of the Court was closed to
them by the bar sinister of their birth. They were
admired, feted, petted everywhere; but the most
exalted circles of Society would not admit them within
their pales. This exclusion, however, mattered little
to the " three Graces," who enjoyed their life and con-
quests to the full. Nor did it damp one whit the
ardour of their well-born wooers.
Laura, the eldest of the trio, was the first to wear a
wedding-ring; and it was placed on her finger by an
Earl's brother, the Hon. and Rev. Frederick Keppel,
brother of Lord Albemarle. Of this union " Uncle
Horace " wrote: " I have forgot to tell you of a
wedding in our family. My brother's eldest daughter
is to be married to-morrow to Lord Albemarle's
brother, a Canon of Windsor. We are very happy
with the match. The bride is very agreeable, sen-
sible, and good, though not so handsome perhaps as
her sisters. . . The second, Maria, is beauty
itself. Her face, bloom, eyes, hair, teeth and person
are all perfect. She has, too, a great deal of wit and
vivacity, with perfect modesty." Laura was, in fact,
the least beautiful of the three Walpoles; and her match
was less brilliant than those of her sisters, although her
husband lived to wear a Bishop's mitre, and to sit in
the House of Lords; and, as the Hon. Mrs. Keppel,
she was the first to " break her birth's invidious bar,"
and to find a place and a welcome in the circle of the
Court.
250
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Where Laura led the way Maria and Charlotte were
not slow to follow. Indeed, both, had they wished,
might have preceded her to the altar, for they were
besieged by tempting offers of marriage. Each had
her retinue of coronetted lovers and slaves; and, like
the Gunnings, whenever they took their walks abroad
or appeared in public, they were besieged by mobs,
of both sexes, eager to catch a glimpse of the famous
beauties.
But both knew the power of their beauty, and were
in no hurry to barter it for coronets. They could
afford to " bide their time " and make a deliberate
choice. Maria had more than one ducal coronet laid
at her feet, but she would not stoop to pick it up.
Among her many titled lovers, however, was one who
would not accept " No." He was James, second
Earl of Waldegrave, a man no longer quite young
he was over forty but a man of distinction in more
ways than one, of high character, and great intellectual
attainments. He was Governor and Privy Purse to
the Prince of Wales, a Privy Councillor, Knight of
the Garter, and a Teller of the Exchequer.
He was not dismayed by the knowledge that he had
many younger and handsomer rivals, or by the cold-
ness with which his advances were received. He was
one of thosfe men who do not know the meaning of
defeat,, and his persistence was at last rewarded by the
capitulation of the fair fortress.
251
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Thus it was that one day in 1759 Maria Walpole
blossomed at the altar into my Lady Waldegrave.
The daughter of the tailor's apprentice was entitled
to wear the coronet of a Countess. Her happiness,
however, was short-lived. For four years she was the
happy wife of an adoring husband. Then the Earl
was struck down with small-pox, and died, after an
illness through which his wife nursed him with touch-
ing devotion and an entire disregard of danger to her-
self.
It was long before the widowed Countess
reappeared in Society; and then she emerged from her
grief and retirement more lovely, if possible, than ever.
Once more legions of admirers and would-be wooers
swelled her train. She would have naught of any of
them. Her life was wrapped up in the three daughters
of her late lord, who already promised to be as fair as
their mother. Each of these daughters, to anticipate,
made an excellent match. One found a husband in
her cousin, the fourth Earl of Waldegrave; another
became Duchess of Graf ton; and a third of these
grand-daughters of the Pall Mall seamstress married
Admiral Lord Hugh Seymour, and became ancestress
of the Marquises of Hertford.
But, though she had vowed herself to widowhood,
it was fated that Lady Waldegrave should again
become a wife that she should make the most dazzling
alliance possible to a lady not herself of Royal rank.
252
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Among her many lovers, and the most abject and
adoring slave of them all, was none other than Prince
William Henry, Duke of Gloucester, brother of King
George III.
The Duke was but a boy of nineteen, and many
years younger than the widow who had stolen his heart
away; but he was no boy in the ardour of his passion
for and pursuit of the lovely Countess. In vain the
lady protested that he was too young, and that the
union was in all ways undesirable. The Prince would
take no denial, listen to no protest. He vowed that
he would resign a crown gladly to make her his wife,
and that, if she would not consent, he would throw
away his life, as worthless without her. What, in face
of such passion and pleading, could the widow do but
consent ? And thus it came to pass that the daughter
of the seamstress became the legal wife of the King's
brother, a possible wearer of the Crown of England.
The story of Maria Walpole's second wedded life
is too long to tell in detail. King George was natur-
ally furious at the match, and rated his brother soundly
on his indiscretion. It was bad enough that his other
brother, the rakish Duke of Cumberland, should have
made a wife of Mrs. Horton, a merry widow of no good
repute; but that the brother he loved so well, more
than anyone else in the world, should have taken a wife
without his knowledge, although that wife was a
Countess of unimpeachable character, was intolerable.
253
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
It was long before the angry King would consent
to recognise the marriage; but when at last he yielded
to his brother's pleadings and to the voice of love, his
consent was as ungrudging as it had been reluctant.
He admitted the low-born Duchess to the full rank
and privileges of a Princess of the Blood; he showered
smiles and favours on her; and, thus recognised as a
member of the Royal Family, Maria Walpole's cup of
pride and splendour was full to the brim.
Her day of power, however, was not of very long
duration. Her Royal husband proved to be as fickle
as he had been passionate. Another charmer caught
him in her toils, the Lady Almeria Carpenter; and the
Duchess, realising that her place in her husband's
affection was lost, refused to continue any claim to it.
She left him, and spent the last years of her life in
retirement and in works of charity, leaving hundreds
of humble hearts the sadder for the loss of the " good
Princess." To the Prince she bore two children a
son, Prince William Frederick, Duke of Gloucester,
who married his cousin Princess Mary, daughter of
King George III.; and a daughter, the Princess
Sophia, who died unmarried in 1844.
Of Charlotte, the youngest of the three Walpole
Graces, the story is soon told. " I announce to you,"
wrote Horace Walpole, in October, 1760, " my Lady
Huntingtower. I hope you will approve the match.
254
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
I suppose my Lord Dysart will, as he does not know,
though they have been married these two hours, that
at ten o'clock this morning his son married my niece,
Charlotte, at St. James's Church. And now, if you
want to know the detail, there was none. Venit,
vidit, vicit. The young lord has liked her for some
time. On Saturday sen'night he came to my brother
and made his demand. The Princess did not know him
by sight, and did not dislike him when she did. She
consented, and they were to be married this morning."
" The young lord, it appears," Horace Walpole
writes in another letter, " had been in love with Char-
lotte for some months, but thought so little of inflaming
her that yesterday sen'night she did not know him by
sight. On that day he proposed himself as son-in-law
to my brother, who, with much surprise, heard his
story, but excused himself from giving an answer.
He would send for Charlotte and know her mind. She
was with her sister Maria, to whom she said very sen-
sibly, ' If I were but nineteen I would refuse point-
blank; for I don't like to be married in a week to a man
I never saw. But I am twenty-two. It is dangerous
to refuse so great a match/ '
And thus it was that the youngest daughter of the
Pall Mall seamstress became the future Countess of
a man- whom she had never seen until a week before
she wore the orange-blossom.
2 S5
CHAPTER XXVI
THE IDOL OF A HERO
A PROFUSION of auburn hair, which fell in a glorious
cascade down to her very heels, a broad forehead,
finely arched and pencilled eyebrows, blue eyes, whose
shyness was strangly winning; a delicate aquiline nose,
a short upper lip, a dainty mouth, already giving
promise of the voluptuous charms it displays in
Romney's canvases; a chin of incomparable shapeli-
ness, good teeth, a complexion pure and bright as an
angel's colour, an expression of seraphic sweetness, a
head set like a piece of antique art on a long, fair neck;
a figure tall and slight, and exquisitely perfect in its
modelling.
Such, at the zenith of her peerless loveliness, was
the woman who, from her cottage cradle, grew to be
an Ambassadress, bosom friend of a Queen, and
enslaver of England's greatest hero. Probably never
has a woman risen from such obscurity to such heights
of sovereignty by virtue alone of her beauty.
When Emma Lyon first opened her eyes on
the world in which she was destined to play such a
dramatic part it was in the cottage of a Cheshire black-
256
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
smith, whose wife her mother was a maid-of-all-
work until she wore her wedding-ring. We know
nothing of Emma's sordid early years until, at thirteen,
we find her acting as nursemaid to the children of a
Hawarden doctor the first of several situations, the
last of which was as general servant to a greengrocer
in St. James's Market.
It was here that her extraordinary beauty attracted
the attention of a lady of fashion, who rescued her from
domestic drudgery to become her companion. But
the beauty, now fully conscious of her budding charms
and the power they gave her, was not long content to
be the shadow even of such a fashionable mistress. A
Captain Payne cast amorous eyes on her, and at their
bidding she changed her role of companion for that of
mistress, a " situation " of which she soon wearied.
We next see her earning her living by posing as
Hygeia in the exhibition of a notorious quack doctor;
and a little later she is installed in the country house
of Sir Harry Fetherstonhaugh, a dissolute Sussex
Baronet, whose plaything she remained until, in a fit
of temper, he turned her out of his door, to fare penni-
less into the world, face to face with an early prospect
of motherhood.
These were terrible days for the Ambassadress-to-
be. To all her pleadings the Baronet turned a deaf
ear. She was haunted with the dread of starvation for
2 57
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
herself and her child, until in her extremity she
appealed for help to the Hon. Charles Greville,
younger son of the Earl of Warwick, a man whom she
had met under Sir Harry's roof, and with whom she
seems, from the letter she wrote to him, to be already
on intimate terms. " Good God," she wrote to him,
" what shall I dow? I have wrote 7 letters and no
answer. I have not a farthing to bless myself with.
For God's sake, G , write the minet you get this,
and only tell me what I am to dow. I am allmos
mad."
In response to this pathetic, if illiterate, appeal,
Greville, who seems to have been a man of good heart,
sent her money to bring her to London, and offered
both herself and her mother a home with him an
offer which was thankfully accepted. Thus we see
Emma Hart (as she now called herself) and her
mother, the ex-maid-of-all-work, comfortably, if
modestly, installed in a small house, with a couple of
maids, near Paddington Green, where for four years
she led a happy life with her new protector. Greville,
who was a Member of Parliament, and a man of con-
siderable culture, spared no pains to cultivate the
mind of his rustic protegee. He encouraged her to
read poetry, provided her with masters for singing and
the pianoforte, and generally surrounded her with the
refinements of life.
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
It was during these happy days that Romney fell
under the spell of Emma's beauty his " divine
lady," the great painter called her, " the most perfect
woman in the world." He painted twenty-four por-
traits of her, portraits of imperishable beauty and
fame; and not only Romney, but Reynolds, Laurence,
and Hoppner vied with each other in making her
charms immortal on canvas.
That the blacksmith's daughter was devoted to her
protector there can be no doubt. Gratitude alone
would have ensured this; and to gratitude was added
a deep affection for her handsome and cultured lover.
But Greville's constancy was not proof against the dis-
illusioning of time; and when his uncle, Sir William
Hamilton, our Ambassador at the Court of Naples,
succumbed in turn to Emma's beauty, during a
visit to his nephew, he welcomed the opportunity of
escape.
Under the pretext of monetary troubles which would
compel him to give up housekeeping and to retire to
Scotland to retrench, Emma, with many tears and
pleadings to be allowed to remain with him, was
induced to accept Hamilton's invitation for a six
months' visit to Naples; and in April, 1786, we find
her setting out rather fearfully for Italy, taking her
mothejr with her, and cheered by Greville's promise to
join her there as soon as he could settle his affairs,
259
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
In Naples she was received with open arms by her
new and middle-aged lover, who was more than thirty
years her senior. He provided for her handsome
apartments near the Embassy, a carriage, a boat, ser-
vants in livery, beautiful dresses all the equipment
of a great lady. But still she was far from happy.
She had left her heart in Greville's keeping, and to
him she writes thus pitifully: " I am sure to cry the
moment I think of you. Therefore, my dear, dear
Greville, if you do love me, for my sake try all you can
to come here as soon as possible. ... I respect
Sir William, and he loves me. But he can never be
my lover. I belong to you, Greville, and to you
only." In a later letter she writes, " For God's sake,
write to me and come to me, for Sir William shall
not be anything to me but your friend. . . What
is to become of me? Give me only one guinea a week
for everything and live with me, and I shall be con-
tented."
But Greville was in no mood to resume the respon-
sibility he had transferred to his uncle. Emma
realised at last that he was weary of her, and in her
pride and indignation determined to plead no more,
but " to make love to the lips that were nearest."
Within a few months we find her writing to Sir
William, " Ah, what a happy creature is your Emma!
Me, that had no friend, no protector, nobody that I
260
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
could trust; and now to be the friend, the Emma, of
Sir William Hamilton! "
In her new world the blacksmith's daughter was
quick to assert the sovereignty of her beauty. The
greatest artists of Italy craved permission to paint or
model her charms. When she was entertained on an
English man-of-war she was greeted with a salute of
twenty guns; the people of Ischia prostrated themselves
at her feet, a homage compelled by her likeness to the
Blessed Virgin. The Duchess of Argyll, when on a
visit to Naples, lost her heart completely to her, and
took her under her wing; the King and Queen treated
her as a Royal sister; and Goethe was among her most
ardent worshippers, vowing that she was " a master-
piece of the great artist Nature." Such was the
admiration and homage she excited that Sir William
Hamilton had no scruple in leading her to the altar
one September day in 1791. The blacksmith's
daughter was now an Ambassador's lady, and member
of a ducal house!
Lady Hamilton had worn her wedding-ring less
than two years when Nelson, then captain of the
Agamemnon, first set eyes on her, and at sight of her
was undone. " The captain I am about to introduce
to youV Sir William said, before the fateful meeting,
" is a little man, and far from handsome, but he will
261
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
live to be a great man. Let him be put into the room
prepared for Prince Augustus."
Over the stirring and romantic times that followed
swiftly on this first meeting of the hero and his
enchanter, culminating in the flight of the Royal
family to Naples (in which, Lady Hamilton says, " I
began the work myself, and removed all the jewels and
thirty-six barrels of gold to our house; these I marked
as ' stores for Nelson ' "), we must pass to that
memorable trip to Malta, in which the " little sailor "
and her ladyship were thrown into hourly companion-
ship, and learned to love each other with a passion
stronger than death itself. How deep this passion had
already become on Lady Hamilton's part had been
proved when Nelson arrived at Naples fresh from his
victory on the Nile. At sight of her hero, with
bandaged head, blind eye, and armless sleeve, we are
told she exclaimed, " Oh, God, is it possible? " and
fell swooning into her hero's one remaining arm.
It was the voyage to Malta that sealed the incon-
gruous passion between the mutilated Admiral and the
wife of the Ambassador. What vows were exchanged
on the blue waters of the Mediterranean we know not;
but we know that thenceforth the two lovers were in-
separable, and that Sir William, unsuspecting,
remained loyal to both wife and friend to his last breath.
Together the oddly-assorted trio travelled through
262
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Europe, Nelson feted as an Emperor; and under the
same roof they lived together either in London or at
Merton Place, as members of one family even the
birth of Horatia (Nelson's child, undoubtedly)
awakening no misgiving in Hamilton's heart.
And thus unsuspicious, Sir William died, describing
his betrayer in his will as "my dearest friend, 'Lord
Nelson, Duke of Bronte, the most virtuous, loyal, and
truly brave character I ever met with. God bless him,
and shame fall on those who do not say Amen."
Thus released, Lady Hamilton was free to continue
her liaison with the Admiral without even the modified
precautions which her husband's presence made advis-
able; and, curiously enough, this relationship seems to
have met with no discouragement from Nelson's
family, with which she was on affectionate terms. Now
the chains which bound Nelson to her became stronger
than ever, although her beauty had grown too coarse
to appeal to aesthetic tastes. " Her figure," says
Mrs. St. George (mother of the Archbishop Trench of
later years), " is colossal, but, excepting her feet,
which are hideous, well shaped. Her bones are large,
and she is exceedingly embonpoint. I think her bold,
daring, vain even to folly, and stamped with the
manners of her first situation much more strongly than
one would suppose, after having represented Majesty
and lived in good company fifteen years." This is
263
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
certainly not a flattering picture; but to Nelson she
was still the one incomparably lovely woman for whose
sake he was glad to be rid of his jealous and somewhat
shrewish wife, and to risk his fair fame, and even his
career.
It was while dallying with his buxom charmer that
the summons came to Trafalgar and glory, and
(though he did not suspect it) to his death. And it
was she who fought the weakness which would have
kept him by her side. " Go," she said to him.
" You will have a glorious victory; and then you may
return and be happy." When, a few months later,
Nelson lay dying in the cockpit of the Victory his last
thought were all for her and his child. ' ' Remember, ' '
he gasped, in the last articulate words he spoke,
" remember that I leave Lady Hamilton and my
daughter Horatia as a legacy to my country."
With the death of her " great and immortal hero,"
the curtain fell rapidly on Lady Hamilton's days of
happiness. Although she had an income of not less
than 2,000 a year, her fortune was quickly dissipated
in wild gambling and extravagance. Within two
years she was 8,000 in debt. She was arrested, and
spent several months within the walls of the King's
Bench Prison, whence she contrived to escape to Calais
with her child, whose treatment of her was not the
least of her many troubles. A year earlier she had
264
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
written to Horatia, " Your conduct is so bad, your
falsehoods so dreadful, your cruel treatment of me such
that I cannot live under these afflicting circumstances.
My heart is broken."
After a final bitter struggle with starvation at Calais
she died one January day in 1815, after addressing a
pathetic appeal to the Prince Regent to care for her
daughter. " I most earnestly recommend her on my
knees," she wrote in that tragic hour, " blessing her
and praying for her that she may be happy, virtuous,
good, and amiable."
A story has been told that a Mrs. Hunter " found
Lady Hamilton living in Calais in the winter of 1814
in absolute want; that she surreptitiously supplied her
with food, and when she died, buried her in a deal
box, with a pall made out of an old silk petticoat."
This story, however, has been proved to be a fable;
for it has since been discovered that she was decently
buried, according to the rites of the Roman Catholic
Church, at a cost of 28 ios., " which money was paid
by a Mr. Caodgan."
265
CHAPTER XXVII
A MAID OF MYSTERY
WHO was Pamela that child of mystery and
romance whose life-story adds to the annals of our
Peerage one of its most fascinating and pathetic
chapters ?
When her childish laughter was first heard in the
nursery of the Due de Chartres (later Due d'Orleans),
and her fairy figure, with flushed face and flying curls,
was seen racing along the corridors of the Palais
Royal, no one in all the palace, from the stately
Mistress of the Robes to the youngest scullion,
seemed to know whence she came or who she was.
Who was this little English fairy of the golden hair,
the dancing blue eyes, and the merry laugh, who had
come thus strangely into the Royal nursery to be the
playmate of the Due's children ; where had she come
from, and what was her history ? Such were the ques-
tions that passed from mouth to mouth, in salon and
boudoir and kitchen alike.
There were many who whispered that she was the
Due's own child. There could be little doubt about
it; for was she not the exact image of her nursery
266
LORD EDWARD FITZGERALD
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
playmates? Others declared with equal certainty
that her mother was none other than Mme. de Genlis,
the Governess of the Orleans children, and a favourite
of the Due, whom, it was said, she could " twist round
her little finger." And if Madame's child, probably
also the Due's; for how otherwise could she have
found such a welcome in his palace? And so it was
settled to the satisfaction of all that, whoever she was,
she had no doubt every right to be where she was.
Madame de Genlis, however, made no concealment
about the matter. The child's presence in the palace
had, she said, the simplest and most natural of ex-
planations. She, as responsible for the Royal
children's education, had decided that it would be well
to introduce into the nursery a little English girl to
share the studies and the games of her pupils, and
this suggestion had the Due's cordial approval.
With this object she had sent Mr. Forth one of
the Due's valets, and himself an Englishman in
quest of a suitable playfellow. After much search-
ing, Mr. Forth had discovered in Hampshire the very
child for the purpose in the five-year-old daughter of
a poor widow, of whom she told the following story :
A few years earlier, Mary Simms, a girl of humble
birth, had become the wife of a Mr. Seymour, a gentle-
man of good family, who had carried his pretty and
low-born bride off to Newfoundland. Two years or
267
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
so later Mr. Seymour had died, and his widow, who
was left penniless, had returned with her baby-girl
to her native land, where she found the utmost diffi-
culty in supporting herself and her child by her
needle and any kind of menial work she could pro-
cure.
Such was her situation when, one day in 1777, Mr.
Forth made the widow's acquaintance, and, struck by
the beauty and winsomeness of her little daughter,
succeeded at last, by liberal offers of money, and by
painting a glowing picture of the child's future in a
Royal palace, in persuading the hopeless mother to
part with her girl. To make the transfer more com-
plete, Mrs. Seymour consented to give her daughter
as " apprentice " to Madame de Genlis, until she came
of age, and signed an agreement to this effect.
Such was the plausible explanation vouchsafed by
Madame to the sceptics of the presence of the new
playmate in the Royal nursery an explanation which
was received with smiles of incredulity, and, it is to be
feared, only served to feed the flames of scandal.
The more or less mythical " Nancy Simms " of the
Hampstead village ceased to exist, and " Pamela "
came to bring sunshine and laughter into the Palais
Royal.
And seldom, if we are to believe contemporary
accounts, has a palace had so sweet and bright an in-
268
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
mate as this English maid of doubtful history. She
was such a creature as poets dream of a woodland
sylph, graceful as a fawn, wild as an elf, lovely as
Titania; a merry little sprite, brimming over with
vitality and mischief, her blue eyes always a-dance
with merriment, her golden curls tumbling riotously
over her dainty little head, her pearly teeth always
agleam between her rosy laughing lips.
To resist the little witch was as impossible as to
escape her impish tricks. And before she had been
in the palace a month, everyone, from the Due down-
wards, was her very slave, proud to share her romps
and to win a kiss from her pouting lips. Even Mme.
de Genlis, who affected to treat her new charge with
indifference, was powerless to keep the child out of
her heart. " I was passionately fond of her," she con-
fessed in later years. " This charming child," she
continues, " was the most idle I ever knew ; she had
no memory, she was very wild, which even added to
the grace of her figure, as it gave her an air of
vivacity. This, joined to her natural indolence, and
to a great deal of wit, made her very engaging. Her
figure was fine and light; she was extremely hand-
some; she flew like Atlanta."
That Pamela was ideally happy in her new home
goes without saying; that the adulation by which she
was surrounded, from her playmates in the nursery
269
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
to the great Court ladies, was powerless to spoil her
nature, is much to her credit. As the happy years
passed each added its touch of beauty and grace, until
by the time she blossomed into young womanhood she
was, by universal consent, the most beautiful and be-
witching girl in the whole circle of the Court of
France. Many a high-placed lover sought her hand
the Due de Montpensier among the most ardent of
them all but Pamela had no mind to exchange her
freedom for any fetters, however golden.
And thus she kept her heart untouched until
" Prince Charming " came her way, in the guise of
Lord Edward Fitzgerald, son of his Grace of
Leinster the handsomest man, it is said, in all Ire-
land ; a man, moreover, as brave and gifted as he was
good-looking. Where and when the young people
first set eyes on each other is not known with any
certainty; but from that first meeting, sometime in
1792, their fate was sealed. It was love at a glance;
and love until death.
In vain did Mme. de Genlis throw every possible
difficulty in the way of the union. Where Pamela
gave her heart, her hand must follow; and thus it
came to pass that one December day she took her
stand before the altar at Tournay with the man to
whom she so gladly surrendered her heart and free-
dom.
270
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
A union so romantic could not fail to excite wide-
spread interest, nor could it fail to revive the old
speculations as to Pamela's origin. The marriage
contract, which is still preserved in Tournay, recites
the nuptials of " Edward FitzGerald, son of the late
Duke of Leinster, and Stephanie Caroline Anne
Simms, known by the name of Pamela, aged 19 years,
daughter of William Berkley and of Marie Simms."
If this was the description of herself given by the
bride, we have a striking contradiction of the story of
her birth as given by Mme. de Genlis, who, it will be
remembered, declared she was the daughter of a Mr.
Seymour. That this official statement was not gener-
ally accepted is proved by the fact that the " Masonic
Magazine " for 1793 announced the wedding of " the
Hon. Lord Edward FitzGerald to Madame Pamela
Capet, daughter of His Royal Highness the ci-devant
Duke of Orleans "; and Moore, in his " Life of Lord
Edward FitzGerald," says that " Pamela was the
adopted, or, as it may be said without scruple, the
actual daughter of Mme. de Genlis by the Due
d'Orleans." Thus we see the mystery of Pamela's
birth remains at her marriage as impenetrable as when
she first appeared in the Palais Royal nursery.
Pamela's marriage wrought a great change in her
life from the splendours of a Royal Court to the
frugal obscurity of " love in a cottage " with the hus-
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
band of her heart. But she would gladly have bar-
tered much more than she had lost for such happiness
as was hers for the next five years for the life which,
she says, was " more like a beautiful dream than a
reality."
It is a picture of idyllically-beautiful wedded life
that Lord Edward discloses in his letters to his
Duchess-mother during this halcyon period, when he
and his lovely wife made their home in various parts
of Ireland, from Kildare to Blackrock, near Dublin.
Their home, at Mr. Conolly's Lodge in Kildare, Lord
Edward describes as " a little Paradise. ... It has
all the things that make beauty to me. My dear wife
dotes on it and becomes it."
At Blackrock the life was equally ideal " a living
poem " ; and charming are the pictures he draws of
their simple doings " Pamela busy in her little
American jacket, planting sweet peas and mignonette,
while I write to my dearest mother. . . . We came
last night, got up to a delightful spring day, and am
enjoying the little book-room with the windows open,
hearing the little birds sing, and the place looking
beautiful. Pamela has dressed four beautiful flower-
pots; upon the two little stands there are six pots of
fine auriculas, and I am sitting in the bay-window, with
all those pleasant feelings which the fine weather,
the pretty place, the singing birds, the pretty wife and
272
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Frescati give me. Her table and work-box, with the
little one's cap, are on the table. . . ."
Such are glimpses of the sweet Arcadian life of our
two lovers when, " the world forgetting, by the world
forgot," they lived but for each other and the little
one who came to crown their happiness and to fill
their cup of bliss to overflowing. Pity that these
sunny days could not last to the end. But there was
a restless strain in Fitzgerald's blood which even his
passion for his wife and child and the home sanctuary
could not keep in subjection, and which was to prove
his undoing.
The stirrings of political discontent lured him away
from the peace of his home and the sweet comrade-
ship of his wife to the meetings of the Society of
United Irishmen. He was tempted to take a leading
part in a scheme for a French invasion of Ireland;
and when the bubble burst, and his life was in danger,
he had to seek safety in flight.
Over the heartrending sequel to this fatal folly,
which brought the edifice of his happiness tumbling
about his and his wife's ears, we must pass briefly.
For a time, he found a safe asylum in Dublin, whither
his devoted wife followed him, finding a lodging for
herself and child near Merrion-square ; and thither
FitzGerald would often steal, under the friendly
cover of the darkness, to spend an hour with the
273
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
woman whom he loved more than life itself, and to
mingle his tears with hers over the cradle of their
sleeping infant. Even the anguish and terror of
these stolen meetings could not rob them of their
sweetness.
But these fearful joys could not last long, with the
bloodhounds so keen on the " traitor's " track.
FitzGerald's hiding place was at last discovered ; and
one night the door of his room was burst open to let
in a posse of soldiers, resolute at any cost to secure
him. But FitzGerald was not the man to be easily
captured, even with such fearful odds against him.
With his back to the wall, and dagger in hand, he
fought with the courage of despair. One after
another his would-be captors fell before the deadly
thrust of his dagger. But the odds were too great.
He was overwhelmed, flung down, and secured, and,
with the blood ebbing from half-a-dozen wounds, was
carried off to the Castle. When he was asked by the
Lord- Lieutenant if he had any message to send to his
wife, he gasped, " Nothing, nothing ! But, oh, break
this tenderly to her."
On learning her husband's fate Pamela's anguish
was heartrending. She begged piteously to be
allowed to share his prison and to nurse him. She
sold all her little possessions, even the rings from her
fingers, and offered her last penny as a bribe to his
274
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
gaolers. But all in vain. She was not even per-
mitted to see the man for whom she would so gladly
have laid down her life. The crowning blows fell
when she was peremptorily ordered to leave Ireland,
and when, a week or so later, news came that her
husband had died from his wound.
" Her agonies of grief," says the Duke of Rich-
mond, who broke the news to her, " were very great,
and violent hysterics soon came on. But by degrees
she grew more calm at times; and although she has
had little sleep and less food, and still has nervous
spasms, yet I hope and trust her health is not materi-
ally affected."
The latter years of Pamela's life were as clouded
with sorrow and tragedy as her early years had been
full of sunshine. After a time spent under the hos-
pitable roof of the Duke of Richmond, she made her
home in Hamburg, where her lonely and destitute
condition led her to the altar a second time with a
wealthy banker called Pitcairn. But this union,
against which heart and body alike rebelled, proved
one long misery ; and not many years later we find the
unhappy woman living obscurely at Toulouse, where
she spent the last eleven years of her life.
Here she seems to have found some solace in her
loneliness and sorrow in acts of kindness and charity
(such charity as her poor purse could provide) to her
275
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
humble neighbours. " Her name," says Madame
Ducrest, a niece of Madame de Genlis, " will ever be
remembered gratefully in the cottages of the poor.
People of fashion will remember, perhaps, the fascin-
ation of the beautiful Lady FitzGerald ; the poor will
never forget the kind and generous acts of Pamela."
Eighty years have gone since the heroine of this
strange story closed her weary eyes on a world which
had given her so much joy and so much unmerited
sorrow; and for eighty years she has been sleeping
her last sleep at Montmartre under a modest tomb-
stone, which bears but one word as inscrutable to-
day as when its owner made the Palais Royal ring
with her childish laughter, and when her golden curls
were seen flying along the palace corridors the word
PAMELA.
276
MRS. FITZHERBERT
CHAPTER XXVIII
AN UNCROWNED QUEEN
" DEBAUCHEE, dissolute, heartless, fickle, cowardly "
the fourth of our Royal Georges no doubt well
merited every one of the scathing adjectives
Thackeray heaps on his memory. He was all this
and more ; his vanity was monstrous, he was weak and
treacherous to the last incredible degree. But he
was none the less " the first gentleman in Europe," a
man of handsome exterior, of courtly graces, and,
when he wished, of infinite personal charm. He was
a pastmaster of all the arts of gallantry ; and, though
he blighted the life of every woman who caught his
wayward fancy, there were few who could resist the
battery of his fascinations.
Among the many victims of this Royal libertine
none commands our respect and sympathy more than
Mrs. Fitzherbert, the " new constellation " that made
an appearance in the fashionable hemisphere in the
summer of 1784; and drew to herself as satellites
" half of our young nobility."
Who was the woman who thus took London by
storm and enslaved all hearts? Mrs. Fitzherbert was
277
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
no debutante, fresh from the schoolroom, and bring-
ing with her the first bloom of a radiant youthful
beauty. She had already worn the bridal veil for
two husbands, and had also worn widow's weeds for
both. The granddaughter of Sir John Smythe, a
Durham Baronet of long and noble lineage, she was
barely nineteen when she wore the orange-blossom
for Mr. Edward Weld, a Dorsetshire squire, who
left her widowed in the same year that saw her a
bride.
Three years later the wedding-bells rang for her
again, and this time she was led to the altar by
Thomas Fitzherbert, Esq., a man of many acres and
a long purse, who had been cradled before her own
father. For three years she was a wife for the second
time, before death set her free once more a double
widow with a jointure of ,2,000 a year, and still only
five years advanced in her twenties.
After this second bereavement Mrs. Fitzherbert
spent three years in retirement on the Continent,
weary of wedded life and its uncertainties, and vow-
ing she would never barter her freedom again for
any man, however charming. But youth stirred in her
veins. Her mirror told her that she was more lovely
than when she first left her father's roof to become a
bride; and though she had forsworn marriage, there
was no reason why she should deny herself the
278
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
pleasures of life which her liberty and purse made
not only available, but very seductive to her.
Thus it was that one day, in 1784, she crossed the
Channel, leaving her weeds and sorrows behind her,
and startled London by a vision of beauty such as
had not feasted its eyes since the days of the Gunnings
and the Walpole " Graces." One has only to look at
her picture to understand the sensation which greeted
the rising of this new beauty in the firmament of
fashion. It would require a pen more skilful than
that of the writer to do justice to such charms as even
her painted portraits present the wealth of golden
hair, in whose dainty curls and tendrils the sun's rays
seem imprisoned ; the liquid blue of the eyes ; the com-
plexion of " wild rose and hawthorn " ; the perfect
oval of the face; the exquisite sweetness of
the lips with the colour and fragrance of a red-
rose leaf; the dainty poise of the head, and a
figure, every soft, rounded line of which is instinct with
grace.
Such, in cold print, was Mrs. Fitzherbert when, in
the summer of 1784, she took the air on Richmond
Hill, or made her dazzling appearance in Lady
Sef ton's box at the Opera ; and it was not long before
" Florizel," ever eager for new conquests, set covetous
eyes^on the lovely widow. Where or when His Royal
Highness Lothario first saw her is a matter of dispute;
279
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
but we know that before she had been many weeks in
England he had not only made her acquaintance, but
was the most abject of all the slaves who prostrated
themselves at her feet.
That she seemed as indifferent to his fascinations
and his wooing as she was unimpressed by his exalted
station only served to fan the flames of his passion.
To have his homage spurned was indeed a novel ex-
perience for Royal George. Had she been com-
plaisant, an easy prey, she would certainly have fared
no better than many another fair flower in the garden
of women whom his passion had blasted and left to
ruin and shame. But Mrs. Fitzherbert was no woman
to be wooed in such fashion, and she quickly let him
know that his pursuit was unwelcome, even if it led to
the altar. " There are," she told him (though none
better knew that it was false), " hundreds of women
prettier than myself. Take your love to them. I
ask nothing of you but to be let alone." Daring
words to speak to the heir to a throne. But what
cared she? She was free as the air to do and speak
as she chose ; and she wanted no lover, however ardent
and exalted.
When he vowed that he would take his life if she
would not listen to his suit she only laughed in his
face, and told him not to be " a silly boy." There
was no weapon in all his armoury which could pene-
280
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
trate her indifference; her contemptuousness drove
him to distraction.
One day, as Lord Stourton tells us, Lords Onslow
and Southampton and others of the Prince's house-
hold came to Mrs. Fitzherbert's house in a state of
great consternation. The Prince, they told her, had
stabbed himself; his life was in grave danger, and
only her immediate presence could save it. For a
long time she refused point-blank to go to him ; and it
was only after long and almost piteous pleading that
she at last consented; and, with the Duchess of
Devonshire as chaperon, was driven swiftly to Carlton
House. There she found the Prince, lying pale and
covered with blood, and to all appearance in extremis
a pathetic spectacle which moved her far more than
all his vows and tears. So deeply affected was she
that, when the Prince, in feeble tones, vowed that he
would not live unless she allowed him to place a
wedding-ring at once on her finger, she consented;
and thus, in her grief, alarm, and sympathy, she suf-
fered a ring of the Duchess to be placed by the appar-
ently dying man on her hand.
Before the next morning dawned, however, reaction
and disillusion came. She was convinced that she
had been lured into this pledge by a despicable trick ;
and so strong was her resentment at the conspiracy
which had wrung from her a consent which she would
281
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
not have given under any other conditions, that she
fled to the Continent to find a refuge from such heart-
less persecution.
When the Prince heard of her flight he was dis-
tracted with rage and despair. He raved like a mad-
man, tore his hair, and flung himself on the floor,
shrieking that he would follow her to the ends of the
earth; and that, even at the cost of his throne, he
would make her marry him. When his father, the
King, refused to allow him to leave England on any
pretext, he pursued the fugitive with letters " full of
passionate pleadings, of heartrending appeals," and
of threats of suicide if she would not return and con-
sent to become his wife.
Was ever woman so assailed, or placed in such a
predicament? Surely, few could long remain
obdurate to such lava-hot passion, and to such heart-
rending appeals. And perhaps it is little wonder
that Mrs. Fitzherbert at last began to show signs of
yielding; or that, by degrees, she was induced, first,
to promise that " she would never marry any other
man," and, finally, that she would give her hand to
save the life of such a desperate wooer.
Thus, one December day in 1785, the widow and
" Florizel " were plighting their vows in her London
drawing-room, with her uncle and brother as witnesses
to the secret nuptials, and one of the Prince's gentle-
282
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
men keeping guard at the door. The Prince had
won at last, and Mrs. Fitzherbert was his wife, "in
the eyes of Heaven."
For more than a year all went fairly well.
" Florizel " surrounded his beautiful bride with
luxury and a semi-royal state, and lavished a more or
less spasmodic affection on her; but he was far too
great a coward to acknowledge to the world as his
wife the woman who had sacrificed herself to his pas-
sion; nor would he utter a word to silence the voice
of scandal that sought to sully her fair name.
More cowardly than his silence was his denial that
she was his wife. When, in his financial straits, it be-
came once more necessary to wheedle Parliament into
paying his debts and increasing his allowance, his
baseness reached the depth of asking his friend Fox
to give a flat denial in the House of Commons to the
report of his marriage. And this Fox did, to the ex-
tent of declaring that the rumour was " a monstrous
invention, a low, malicious falsehood." And yet,
such was " Florizel's " incredible treachery that, the
very next day, he went up to Mrs. Fitzherbert, and,
taking hold of both of her hands and caressing her,
said, " Only conceive, Maria, what Fox did yesterday.
He went down to the House and denied that you and
I were man and wife. Did you ever hear of such a
thing?" Mrs. Fitzherbert, we are told, "made no
283
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
reply; but changed countenance and turned pale."
Thus did this Royal Judas lie to friend and wife
thus did he betray both.
But so long-suffering was Mrs. Fitzherbert that she
remained true to the Prince, in spite of his many infi-
delities (for even her first year of wedded life was
varied by scandalous amours) and the cruelty with
which he sandwiched his affection. So afraid was she
of him that many a time, " when she heard the Prince
and his drunken companions on the staircase, she
would seek a refuge from their presence under the
sofa, when the Prince, finding the drawing-room de-
serted, would draw his sword in joke, and, searching
about the room, would at last draw forth the trembling
victim from her place of concealment."
Her solace was that, however brutal and unfaithful
her husband might be, she was respected and kindly
treated by every other member of the Royal Family,
including the King and Queen, whose tenderness and
affection were very grateful to her. Her position as
wife to the heir to the throne was, indeed, so far
recognised that a Duchess's coronet was offered to
her only, however, to be declined.
When George's growing debts at last drove him to
his ill-starred marriage with Caroline of Brunswick
a ceremony at which the bridegroom " was so drunk
that the Duke of Bedford could scarcely support him
284
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
from falling " Mrs. Fitzherbert once more recovered
her freedom for a time, until the Prince begged her
to return to him; an appeal which, strangely enough,
was supported by many members of his family. But
it was only after the Pope had sanctioned the re-union
that she consented to live with him again as his wife.
Then followed eight years, which she always de-
clared were the happiest of her connection with the
Prince years in which " Florizel " seems to have
made a real effort to treat her with loyalty and affec-
tion. But it was not in his nature to be constant to
any woman; and it speaks volumes for Mrs. Fitz-
herbert's power of fascination that she kept him so
long by her side. When Lady Hertford crossed his
path, a woman as designing as she was beautiful, the
Prince's fickle heart flew to her, and his growing cold-
ness convinced his wife that he was finally lost to her
The climax came one June day in 1811, at a dinner
given to Louis XVIII. When Mrs. Fitzherbert
asked the Prince where she was to sit, his frigid
answer was, " You know, madam, you have no place."
" None, sir/' was the dignified answer, " but such as
you choose to give me."
After such a rebuff, following on months of neglect
Mrs. Fitzherbert decided to live no more with her
husband. She retired to Brighton, where for twenty-
six years she led a life of retirement, winning the love
285
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
of all who knew her by her charm and her goodness
of heart, and almost worshipped by the poor, to whom
she was an unfailing friend and sympathiser, as well
as a Lady Bountiful.
The Hon. Grantley Berkeley, who knew her well in
her latter years, says, " I remember her well, her deli-
cately fair, yet commanding, features and gentle de-
meanour. That exquisite complexion she main-
tained, almost unimpaired by time, up to the arrival
of old age ; and her manner, unaffected by years, was
equally well preserved."
Seven years before this " uncrowned Queen " was
laid to rest in the old Catholic church at Brighton, her
husband, who, as George IV., had worn his crown for
ten years, was gathered to his fathers. By his own
wish he was laid to rest " with the picture of my be-
loved wife, Maria Fitzherbert, suspended round my
neck with a ribbon, as I used to wear it when I lived,
and placed right upon my heart." And when he lay
in death in Windsor Castle, the Duke of Wellington
" discovered round his neck a very dirty and much-
worn piece of black ribbon," to which was attached a
jewelled miniature of the woman who, in spite of his
falseness to her, was probably the only woman who
had ever found a permanent place in his fickle heart.
286
LORD GEORGE BENTINCK
CHAPTER XXIX
A METEOR OF THE TURF
THERE are probaby few who to-day recall the
splendours of Lord George Bentinck, whose brilliant
and too brief life closed in tragedy two generations
ago; although for more than twenty years, when the
last century was young, he was beyond question the
brightest star in the social and sporting firmaments of
England.
The chronicles of his time are full of glowing
tributes to " Lord George," as he was affectionately
known. " He was," said John Kent, one of his
veriest slaves, " the beau ideal of an English noble-
man. He stood over six feet in height; his figure
was, beyond that of any other man of my acquaint-
ance, stately and elegant; his features were naturally
handsome and refined ; his hands and feet small, and
beautifully shaped; and his whole appearance most
commanding."
" Sylvanus " wrote enthusiastically of him in the
" Gentleman's Magazine " as "a tall, high-bred man,
with an air particularly his own, so distinguished, yet
so essentially of the country, did he seem even
287
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
amongst the galaxy of patrician sportsmen with whom
he was congregated. He had all the eye and com-
plexion of the pure Saxon, and the indescribable air
noble to perfection."
Such was the physical equipment of this young
nobleman, of whom his contemporaries spoke with
bated breath as " a superior being," " a god-like man,
a king of men " ; and who flashed meteor-like across
the sky, to be merged suddenly and tragically in dark-
ness.
One looks in vain in these drab days for a per-
sonality so picturesque and so commanding. Picture
Lord George in all the glory of buckskin breeches,
exquisitely-made top-boots, buff waistcoat of reddish-
brown, green cut-away coat ornamented with buttons
of the Jockey Club, his beaver-hat poised at the
modish angle on his handsome head of auburn hair,
and we get a fair presentment of this noble " idol "
of three quarters of a century ago as he rode on to a
racecourse, the observed of a hundred thousand eyes
as seemingly unconscious of the admiration he ex-
cited as he was indifferent to homage which a King
might have envied.
Such, then, was Lord William George Frederick
Cavendish Bentinck, who was cradled at Welbeck
three years before the cannon thundered at Trafalgar.
A son of the ducal house of Portland, he was born to
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
a splendid heritage; although, as a younger son, the
strawberry-leafed coronet and the ancestral acres
were not for him. A passion for the Turf was in his
blood; for his father, the Duke of Portland, was one
of the keenest of sportsmen, who lived to see his horse
Tiresias win the Derby, in the very year in which his
son, George, first wore his uniform as cornet in the
loth Hussars.
Lord George's career as a soldier the handsomest
officer in King George's army, he was acclaimed
was destined to be brief. He was not the man, wil-
ful and high-spirited as he was, to submit tamely to
discipline; and it was not long before a quarrel with
a superior officer, a Captain Kerr, brought matters to
a climax. " If you don't make this young gentleman
behave himself, Colonel, I will !" the Captain hotly
exclaimed one day on parade; whereupon the insub-
ordinate " sub " retorted, " Captain Kerr ventures to
say on parade that which he dare not say off''
When, however, the Captain sent Bentinck a chal-
lenge, it was promptly and firmly declined, to the
amazement of his brother officers. The young
lieutenant was branded " coward " ; but he smiled in-
differently at the taunt as indeed he could afford to
smile, for on later occasions he proved to the world
that he had courage enough and to spare. Notably
when he fought his famous duel with Squire Osbaldes-
289
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
ton over a Turf quarrel. The Squire was the dead-
liest shot in England, a man who could bring down
a swallow on the wing with a pistol-ball. Bentinck
had never had a pistol in his hand before the day of
the duel; but he faced his man with a smile; and,
while he himself fired in the air, had the good luck to
escape with a ball through his hat.
Fortunately a way of escape from the awkward pre-
dicament his refusal to fight Captain Kerr had brought
about was found in the appointment of Mr. Canning,
his uncle, as Governor-General of India. Bentinck
was chosen to accompany him as secretary, an office
which he later filled when Canning became Foreign
Secretary and leader of the Commons. Thus the
young nobleman drifted by slow degrees from arms
to a political life, and incidentally to the Turf, in both
of which fields his peculiar gifts found a congenial and
ample scope.
In a short time we find him representing Lynn in
Parliament, building up a reputation as a statesman,
and devoting his leisure to his beloved horses. On
the Turf his career was brilliant from the very first.
He was a born horseman, and rode many of his own
horses to victory. In 1833 he started a racing-stud
under John Day's management; and his colours, the
sky-blue and white cap, were soon seen in the first
flight on every great racecourse in England. One by
290
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
one the great prizes fell to him the St. Leger, the
Two Thousand, the Ascot Cup. Within seven years
he had as many as sixty horses in training; while his
racing-stud numbered a round hundred.
In one year his training bill alone came to ; 7,000;
travelling expenses to 3,600; and forfeits to
,23,000. His out-of-pocket expenses in that year
reached ,50,000; but he won double this sum in
stakes and wagers; so that he put ; 50,000 in his
pocket as the result of one year's racing.
No man not even Lord Glasgow or the Marquis
of Hastings ever plunged so regally on the Turf.
His daring and colossal wagers were the despair and
wonder of all rivals ; and so admirable was the judg-
ment that inspired them that he seldom made a heavy
loss. He stood, for instance, to win 150,000 on his
horse Gaper for the Derby of 1843; but, although
Gaper could not even get a place, so skilfully was his
owner's book made that he had ,30,000 to draw on
settling day. Crucifix alone won ,60,000 for him
among his many victories being the Two Thousand
Guineas, the One Thousand, and the Oaks. But the
one great triumph on which he had set his heart, the
Derby the crown and goal of his ambition always
eluded him, and made all his other triumphs but
" vanity and vexation of spirit."
So keenly, as the years passed and this golden
291
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
guerdon eluded him, did he feel the cruelty of Fate
that, in despair, he determined to abandon the Turf.
One day in 1846 the world of sport was astounded to
hear that Lord George had sold his entire stud " for
a song " ; and that the Turf would know him no more.
It was on the Goodwood course that he walked up
to George Payne, and said, " The lot, Payne, from
Bay Middleton to little Kitchener (his jockey) for
' 10,000? Yes or no?" " I will give you ^300 to
have till breakfast-time to-morrow to consider the
offer," Payne answered. At breakfast on the follow-
ing morning Payne handed Bentinck a cheque for
^300, which the latter was placidly pocketing, when
Mr. Mostyn, who was sitting at the lower end of the
table, glanced up from the letters he was reading, and
quietly said, " I'll take the lot, Bentinck, at ,10,000."
" If you please," Lord George replied, equally
calmly, and the bargain was concluded.
Thus dramatically Lord George's career as owner
of racehorses came to an end. But mark the irony of
fate. Among the horses thus parted with " at a
word" was Surplice, which two years later captured
both the Derby and the St. Leger. The crowning
guerdon of Bentinck's life was actually in his own
hand, and he had flung it away in a moment of dis-
gust and pique. Was ever Fortune more cruel than
to this " spoiled child " of hers ?
292
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Beyond a doubt this dastardly blow of Fate broke
Lord George's heart. How crushing it was Lord
Beaconsfield reveals to us. On the day following
the Derby of 1848, which Surplice had so gallantly
won, the great statesman met Lord George Bentinck
in the library of the House of Commons. " He was
standing," Beaconsfield says, " before the book-
shelves, with a volume in his hand, and his counten-
ance was greatly disturbed. His horse, Surplice,
whom he had parted with among the rest of his stud
that he might pursue without distraction his political
labours, had won that paramount and Olympic stake
to gain which had been the object of his life. He
had nothing to console him, and nothing to sustain
him, except his pride. Even that deserted him before
a heart which he knew at least could yield him sym-
pathy. He gave a sort of superb groan.
" ' All my life I have been trying for this, and for
what have I sacrificed it?' he murmured.
" It was in vain to offer solace.
" * You do not know what the Derby is/ he moaned
out.
"'Yes, I do; it is the Blue Riband of the
Turf.'
" ' It is the Blue Riband of the Turf/ he slowly
repeated to himself; and, sitting down at a table,
buried himself in a folio of statistics."
293
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
A few months later, one September night in 1848,
Lord George was found dead in a remote corner of
the park of Welbeck Abbey, the home of his boyhood.
On the morning of that fatal day he had risen full of
health, in the very prime of his physical strength, and,
after spending a few hours in his study, had started
to walk to Lord Manvers' house, six miles away, where
he was to spend a couple of days. He had sent his
valet in advance by the road, intending himself to
follow across country; but he never reached his
destination.
When the darkness fell, and he had not yet arrived,
a small army of servants with lanterns was sent in
search of him ; and they found him, lying outstretched,
face downwards, cold and stiff at the foot of a gate on
the fringe of the deer-park. He had covered a mile
of his journey when death overtook him, and with a
coward's blow struck him down in the prime of his
days. Thus, in tragedy and loneliness, closed one of
the most brilliant lives that ever adorned the Turf or
won the homage and the love of men.
The news of this tragedy in a lonely glade of the
Welbeck deer-park was received throughout England
with horror and incredulity. It seemed so impos-
sible an outrage, no less that a life so splendid
and full of promise should thus be cut off in the plenti-
tude of its powers. The bucolic jury gave as its ver-
294
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
diet, " Died by the visitation of God : to wit, a spasm
of the heart." That it was a visitation of God as
every death must of necessity be could not be gain-
said; that Lord George's heart may have been weak
or diseased, though none had heard of it, was possible.
But was this the true explanation of the tragedy
might it not be the result of a crime ? Such were the
thoughts that set many a tongue wagging. There
was, however, no sign of violence no evidence of
any other hand than that of God.
It was no doubt these misgivings that gave rise to a
story widely accepted at the time, although, no doubt
rightly, discredited now. It was more than hinted
that Lord George did not die a natural death that a
human hand, in fact, was responsible for his mysteri-
ous end, and that hand was the hand of his elder
brother, the Marquis of Titchfield, known in later
years as " the mad Duke of Portland," the " Wizard
of Welbeck."
Thus the story ran. Lord George and his brother,
the Marquis, had long been rivals for the favour of a
lovely and penniless girl, Annie May Berkeley, whose
birth was as romantic as her beauty was great. She
was, it is said, the daughter of Frederick Augustus,
fifth Earl of Berkeley, by Mary Cole, daughter of a
Gloucester butcher, whom in later years, after Mary's
birth, he made his Countess. Thus, through her
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
father, Annie May Berkeley could claim a noble
birth, though it was marred by the bar sinister.
The rivalry of the brothers for the sole possession
of Miss Berkeley's charms had led, as such rivalries
naturally will do, to many a quarrel, in which heated
words, and even blows, had been exchanged. It had
led not merely to estrangement, but to a mutual
hatred. Assuming such premises, it was no difficult
matter to evolve a tragedy from them. While stroll-
ing across the deer-park on his way to Thoresby, Lord
Manvers* seat, Lord George, according to the story,
chanced to meet his brother and rival. Angry words
were followed by blows; a heavy blow struck by the
Marquis landed on his brother's chest, over the heart,
which was diseased, and proved fatal.
Such is the story which, sixty years and more ago,
was widely circulated and believed. That it owed its
origin to a too vivid and fertile imagination seems
more than probable. But, if true by any chance, it
would certainly solve two problems which otherwise
must ever remain without satisfactory solution why
Lord George Bentinck perished thus mysteriously in
the full vigour of a particularly robust manhood ; and
why his brother, the Marquis, developed so soon after-
wards that moroseness and misanthropy and those
eccentricities which earned for him the designation,
" the mad Duke of Portland."
CHAPTER XXX
AT THE SIGN OF THE " RED SHIELD "
ANYONE who chanced to walk through the Judengasse
in Frankfort about the middle of the eighteenth century
might have seen a dark-eyed, sallow-faced boy, with
his satchel of books on his back, hurrying home from
school; but he would scarcely have given a second
glance at this Jewish bantling who differed in no way,
except perhaps in the brilliance of his eyes and the
keenness and determination of his little face, from the
hundreds of other children who swarmed in the dark,
evil-smelling rookery. In this narrow street of tower-
ing, grimy buildings, into which the sunlight rarely
found its way, were herded the despised and persecuted
Jews of Frankfort. Each wore the badge which
marked his cursed caste; and at nightfall heavy chains
were drawn across each end of the foetid lane, beyond
which none might pass, under penalty of death, until
the dawn of another day came.
It was in one of these human rookeries, before which
swung a " red shield " for sign, that Meyer Amschel
Rothschild, the dark-eyed schoolboy, was cradled one
day^in the year 1743; the son of a poor dealer in odd-
ments, but destined by capricious Fate to found " a
297
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
house that should stand far higher than that of Haps-
burg or Coburg, by the right of a power more mighty
than that of ancestry the power of gold."
From his low-born forefathers, whose name Bauer
(peasant) proclaimed their origin, Meyer Amschel
inherited all a Jew's love of gold; but the genius which
he so early developed for winning it was all his own.
As a schoolboy, he began to make money by shrewd
dealings in coins and curios. He quickly realised that
there was no scope for him in the narrow confines of
the Frankfort Ghetto; and, as soon as his schooldays
were over, he fared boldly forth into the world, knap-
sack on his back, a stout stick in his hand, and his small
savings in his pocket, to conquer fortune.
At Hanover he found a vacant stool in the office of
Oppenheims, the wealthy bankers; and he turned his
opportunity to such excellent account that within a few
years he had scaled the ladder of promotion to the rung
of manager. And when he once again set foot in
Frankfort it was as a man of capital and experience
that he set up as a dealer in bullion and bills of
exchange, as a banker and financier.
Already, on the threshold of manhood, this son of
the unsavoury Ghetto was a man of wealth and power.
Customers flocked to him from far and near, and his
fair dealing soon won for him the description " The
Honest Jew.'* Gold flowed into his coffers; and
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
living modestly, even meanly, his fortune progressed
by leaps and bounds, until Meyer Rothschild, the
peasant's son, was known as the richest man in Frank-
fort.
One day, so the story is told, Baron Erstoff took the
young banker to introduce him to William IX., Land-
graf of Hesse-Cassel. The Landgraf, absorbed in a
game of chess, glanced up from the board and asked
the Jew, " Do you understand chess? " " Suffi-
ciently well," was the prompt and diplomatic answer,
" to induce me, if the game were mine, to castle on
the king's side! " an answer which pleased His
Highness so much that, a few days later, Rothschild
found himself installed as banker to William and his
Court.
These were the terrible days when Napoleon was
laying Europe waste with fire and sword; and his
destroying armies were now drawing near to Frank-
fort. The Landgraf, alarmed for his personal safety,
began to make hurried arrangements for flight; and,
unable to take his gold with him, gave it into the
custody of his banker probably scarcely hoping to
see it again. It is said that Rothschild promptly
buried the treasure, amounting to half-a-million
pounds or more, in his garden, where at least it should
be safe from marauding soldiers. But the more pro-
bable story is that the Hof-Agent found a much better
299
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
use for the gold thus entrusted to his care. " He saw
how to make it yield an excellent return to himself;
and at a time when gold was so scarce, and in such
universal demand, he saw that it required only a cool
head and sound judgment to turn over the capital to
considerable advantage. The result was that within
six years he had nearly quadrupled the Landgraf s
treasure."
However this may be, we know that when William
was at last able to return to Hesse-Cassel, the banker
proudly handed over every pound of his fortune, with
substantial interest added ; that he was a much richer
man than when it came into his keeping, and also that
William was so pleased with this evidence of honesty
that he left the money in Rothschild's hands to do as
he pleased with.
The tide of Meyer Amschel's fortune now began to
run more strongly than ever. War, which brought
ruin and disaster to others, poured streams of gold into
his exchequer. From his stores of gold he was able
to lend large sums to Napoleon, to the allied Princes,
and to Denmark. He made 150,000 a year by con-
veying specie from England to Spain to pay Welling-
ton's soldiers. He became the financial king of
Europe, to whom other Kings came as suppliants; and
while feeding the flames of war with his gold, drew
from it fortune on fortune.
300
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
When at last Meyer Amschel died, full of years,
and rich beyond his wildest dreams, he summoned to
his bedside his five sons and daughters, and counselled
them to keep intact the large fortune he had built up
for them to work together in harmonious partnership
never, so far as possible, to marry outside the family
circle; to be cautious, honourable, and industrious.
This and much other sage counsel the dying Croesus
gave to those to whom he left the burden and respon-
sibility of his wealth. But already he had long seen
all his five sons following worthily in his footsteps.
Each was head of a branch of the family business at
Frankfort, Vienna, London, Naples, and Paris. The
Rothschild net was cast all over Europe, and every
branch was flourishing.
So precociously clever was his son Nathan that at
thirteen he had been sent to England to take charge
of the family interests; and in a few years he had
qualified as the most astute dealer in cotton that Man-
chester had ever known. From Manchester he
migrated to London, with 200,000 at his back, to
match his wits against the cleverest of our financiers;
and so brilliant was his success that before he saw his
thirtieth birthday he had increased his fortune tenfold.
He made hundreds of thousands of pounds by
trafficking in Wellington's drafts, which he bought at
a heavy discount, and sold to the Government at par.
301
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Like his father, he advanced enormous sums to the
great nations of Europe, clearing a fortune on each
transaction; and soon waxed so rich and powerful that
twice he saved the Bank of England from the ignominy
of having to close its doors.
A story which shows how Nathan first compelled
the Bank of England to realise his power is told thus:
The Bank had refused to accept the paper of private
individuals, and Nathan is supposed to have
exclaimed: " Private individuals! I shall make the
directors feel what kind of private individuals are the
Rothschilds." Picture him, three weeks later, in his
old frock coat, presenting to the cashier of the Bank
of England a five-pound note, for which he receives,
not without close scrutiny, five sovereigns. Another
five-pound note is tranquilly presented at the wicket,
and nine of Nathan's employes are engaged in the
same tedious process of exchange. This process con-
tinues all through banking hours, and the next day
Nathan and his employes return. The Bank finds his
conduct " very eccentric "; but, as he assures the
directors that he is able and willing to continue the
siege in this manner for two months, they capitulate,
and agree to accept the paper of those " private
individuals," the Rothschilds.
There was no army on the Continent that was not
followed by the keen eyes of Nathan's agents. Every
302
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
day swift pigeons were winging their way to London,
carrying cipher messages recording each ebb and flow
in the tide of war; and every day the astute Jew was
coining information into gold on the Stock Exchange.
The climax of his foresight came when Napoleon's
final fate hung in the balance on the plain of Waterloo.
Nathan himself had followed Wellington's army to
the battlefield, clinging closely to its skirts, in spite of
the Duke's threat to " hang that plaguey Jew if he did
not keep his distance "; and from a point of vantage he
watched keenly the fortunes of the day.
When he saw that Napoleon's fate was sealed, he
dug his spurs into his horse, raced madly through the
night to Ostend, bribed some fishermen to risk their
lives by carrying him across the storm-tossed Channel;
and the next morning was in his place in the Stock
Exchange, the picture of solemnity and dejection.
Soon the news flashed through the House that Welling-
ton had been beaten Rothschild's face alone was
proof enough. The funds dropped heavily; and as
they dropped his agents bought and bought, to the
tune of many millions. The following day came news
of the great victory. The enemy of Europe was
crushed beyond recovery. Up soared the funds like a
rocket. Nathan's agents unloaded; and their clever
master was able to put a round million pounds of profit
into his pocket.
3>3
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
But all his millions were powerless to bring happi-
ness to Nathan Rothschild. As he progressed in years
and riches he became more and more a prey to tortur-
ing delusions. He lived in daily fear of the assassin's
knife or pistol; he saw in every man he met an enemy.
The caricatures and satires of which he was the butt
made him so morbidly sensitive that he would slink
shamefacedly along the streets, fearing to see derision
in the face of every passer-by. And when death came
at last to relieve him of his gold and his fears, his last
words, gasped with horror in his eyes, were: " Look!
He is trying to kill me! "
While Nathan was prospering in England, his four
brothers were equally successful on the Continent.
Each of them (as well as Nathan) had been ennobled,
and had blossomed into a Baron of the Austrian
Empire. Each was the centre of a fawning crowd of
satellites, including Kings and the great ones of the
earth; and to each the most exclusive doors of Society
were flung open in obsequious welcome. The sons of
the Ghetto child were the financial sovereigns of the
world.
At Paris, Baron James was " plus roi que le roi."
He was a weekly and welcome guest at the King's
table; his wife's receptions were attended by Louis
Philippe and his sons; his home was a palace of Art
and luxury which had scarcely a rival in Europe; and,
34
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
in his prodigal charity, he would dine with his windows
open, so that he might fling banknotes and gold to the
grovelling beggars gathered outside.
Such were the splendours and wealth which the sons
of the Judengasse dealer in curios lived to see. How,
in later years, the family of Rothschild added to their
gold until it is now estimated in hundreds of millions
of pounds; the colossal scale of their transactions, of
which the raising of 160,000,000 in British Govern-
ment loans is a sample; their splendours and their regal
charities all these are too well known to call for
detailed mention.
The present head of the English house figures on
our roll of Peerage; the Rothschild daughters have
mated with foreign Princes and nobles. One wore a
Countess's coronet as Lord Rosebery's wife; others
have become members of the Hardwicke and
Southampton families. And in the years to come the
blood of the Ghetto child will, no doubt, flow in the
veins of scores of the most exalted families of Europe.
CHAPTER XXXI
AN EARLDOM THAT WENT A-BEGGING
THE noble house of Hastings, whose proud pedigree
reaches back to the far-away days when Hugh de
Hastings played the role of Steward to the first of our
Henrys, records many a romantic story in its eight
centuries of history; but none more singular than the
episode to which the death of the tenth Earl of
Huntingdon was the prelude.
When Francis, the tenth lord of his line, was laid to
rest in the family vault one October day in 1780, it
seemed to the world at large that the book of his family
history was closed for ever. One after another the
descendants of every Earl who had preceded him had
died out. His own three brothers had died unwed;
and to himself no child had been born. The news-
papers which recorded his death and his virtues
referred to him as the last of his distinguished line.
But noble houses are not often so completely extir-
pated. There is usually to be found some remote and
obscure kinsman, whose very existence is perhaps un-
known, who steps forward to claim the derelict
honours, and so it was with this Earldom of Hunting-
don. The tenth Earl had not long been in his vault
before it began to be rumoured that he had a successor
306
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
in a country parson, the Rev. Theophilus Henry
Hastings, Rector of Great and Little Leke, an
obscure and eccentric cleric who had just celebrated
his seventieth birthday by taking to wife a domestic
servant.
The Rev. Theophilus was, in fact, the rightful heir
to the Huntingdon Earldom, although he had to go
back to Elizabeth's day to prove his title. He was
the lineal descendant of Sir Edward Hastings,
youngest son of the second Earl by Katherine Pole,
who had for great-grandfather George, Duke of
Clarence, brother of King Edward IV. His pedigree,
when it was produced, was unimpeachable; and the
country Rector, who cared far more about tithes than
titles, found himself in his old age the richer by a
coronet and a wife, both equally undesired. And by
both wife and rank he came equally romantically.
When Mr. Hastings was a young man fresh to his
cassock he had lost his heart to the charms of a win-
some chambermaid, one Betsy Warner; and in the
fervour of his passion he promised to make her his wife
as soon as a living fell to his lot. Years passed, the
lovers were separated and the faithless Theophilus
had secured both the living and another bride, but
Betsy never came either to claim her rights or to load
him with reproaches.
He was, in fact, a widower and an old man, with
more thought of the next world than of earthly altars,
3>7
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
when one day a post-chaise drawn by four horses
rattled up the Rectory drive, and came to a halt at
his door. An elderly, plain-featured woman
descended, and was ushered into the parson's study.
" What can I do for you, madam? " was the
reverend gentleman's greeting to his unknown visitor.
" What can you do for me? " the lady repeated, in
accents of surprise and reproach. " Why, Theo-
philus, don't you know me? I am Betsy Betsy
Warner, the girl you loved and promised to marry
many years ago. I have been true to you from that
day to this; and now that you have got the living, of
course you'll keep your word and marry me! "
Was ever man parson or layman placed in a more
awkward predicament? Here was an aged, unattrac-
tive, illiterate woman who claimed him as husband.
There was no escape. His honour was pledged; and,
true to his word, within a month he placed a wedding-
ring on Betsy's finger, and in fact made a Countess of
the once buxom peasant's daughter. A second wife
was thus thrust upon him; but to his title he would have
nothing to say. He declined to be addressed as " my
lord "; and when once a friend protested against such
modesty, he answered somewhat ungraciously, " I
have no objection to being an Earl; but I will never
make Betsy a Countess." And as plain Theophilus
Hastings he died and was buried, after enjoying his
shadowy honours less than four years.
308
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
But although he refused to wear his coronet, he was
none the less anxious that his right to it should be
acknowledged and put on record; and, with this object,
he had placed on one of the pillars of his gate a plate
with a Latin inscription, stating that he was the
eleventh Earl of Huntingdon, and by descent entitled
to the Earldom.
When the eleventh Earl followed the tenth to his
last home the title once more became dormant. Theo-
philus's only surviving brother, George, has preceded
him to the grave by two years; and of George's four
sons every one was said to be dead. Thus, it seemed
certain that the Earldom, which had survived for
nearly three centuries, had seen its last holder. But,
although the College of Heralds and every learned
genealogist had come to this exhaustive conclusion,
there was one man who knew, or thought he knew, very
different.
Some years after the death of Earl Theophilus there
was living at Enniskillen one Captain Hans Francis
Hastings, who, after long service in the King's Navy,
had found a snug, if obscure, berth there as garrison
storekeeper. A quiet, unpretentious man was the
Captain a plain old " salt " who was hail-fellow-
well-met with everybody one of the last men in
Enniskillen who would be associated with titles of
Peerage. Indeed, no word of his birth and possible
claims ever escaped the Captain's lips, except in his
309
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
confidential chats over a glass and a pipe with Nugent
Bell, a local attorney, who made a hobby of genealogy,
and thus took an interest in questions of family history.
It was during one such confidential chat that the
lawyer said jokingly, " I say, Hastings, why don't you
put in a claim to the Huntingdon Earldom? I'll
wager you have as good a chance as anybody; and I'll
help you all I can." To this the Captain laughed
enigmatically. " That's all right. If you can't
make an Earl of me, nobody can." And with such
small encouragement the attorney drew from his friend
one reluctant scrap of family history after another,
until at last he exclaimed, " 'Pon my soul, Hastings!
I really believe you are the Earl! We'll have you in
the House of Lords yet! "
Then it was that Hastings made a further con-
fidence. " A good many years ago," he said, " I
took the trouble to go to the College of Arms to ask
what steps I should take to claim the title, and how
much it would cost; but when I learned that nothing
less than three thousand guineas would pay the bill, I
decided not to trouble any more about it."
The following day the Captain wrote to his friend:
" My dear Bell, I will pay you all costs in case you
succeed in proving me the legal heir to the Earldom.
If not, the risk is your own, and I will certainly not be
answerable for any expense you may incur in the
course of your investigation." On the back of this
310
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
letter, as showing what he thought of the whole affair,
the Captain had written, " By all that's good, you're
mad."
Bell's optimism, however, had thoroughly roused
the Captain, though he still affected to treat the matter
in a humorous light, as the following letter, written a
few days later, proves: " My dear Nugent, If you
should establish me in the Earldom, all I can say is
that it will be impossible for me or mine to do too much
for you and yours. I am not sanguine; but the very
names of George, Henry, Ferdinando, and Francis
convince me we are the only true descendants of
Francis, the second Earl. D it! Succeed, and
you shall be my falconer! If the ' Countess ' does
not leave Dublin by Tuesday morning, you will cer-
tainly see me at No. 3, Morland-street, on Wednesday.
Therefore, I beg you will provide for the Earl at that
hour. Yours, etc., FRANK."
This was quite sufficient for the lawyer. He had
now gone exhaustively into the Hastings pedigree; he
was personally satisfied that if anyone had a right to
the Huntingdon Earldom, it was the Captain, who,
moreover, was willing that he should do what he could
in the matter. In August, 1817 (within a month of
the conversations I have recorded) , Mr. Bell was in
England prosecuting his searches. At Castle
Donington and Donington Park (Hastings' seats) he
met with rebuffs and disappointment. Everywhere he
3"
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
found himself baffled, and he had begun to despair,
when accident at last placed the sought-for clue in his
hand.
One day he was tramping in Leicestershire, carrying
a heavy heart with him, when he was overtaken by an
old woman in a market-cart, who kindly offered him a
lift on his way. As they jogged along, the garrulous
old lady entertained him with stories of her youth,
when she was "a very pretty girl," and a maid in the
service of the Hastings family. At the word
" Hastings/' the attorney pricked up his ears; and,
to his delight, learned that the old market-woman had
actually known Colonel George Hastings (the father
of his friend, the Captain), who was " on the eve of
being married to her young mistress, the Lady Selina,
when her ladyship died suddenly, in the bloom of
youth and beauty."
" Colonel Hastings at last married " continued
the old gossip, little dreaming how eagerly her listener
was drinking in every word of her story " a very
beautiful young lady, and had four sons, who, sorry
am I to say, are all dead. Master Frank, the eldest,
died at Grantham in his sixth year; Henry and
Ferdinando died of yellow fever in the West Indies;
and the fourth and youngest son, Hans, was drowned
in the Cove of Cork."
At last, by the merest chance, the lawyer had learned
the truth. " After I had patiently heard her out,"
3"
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
he says, " I, in my turn, informed her that the person
supposed to be drowned at Cork was still alive and
happy, and that it was by no means improbable that
she would soon see him in possession of at least the
honours of his family.*'
There could now be no doubt about it. The Colonel
George Hastings of the old woman's story was brother
of the late parson- Earl, and father of his Enniskillen
friend, Captain Hans Francis. The Captain's three
brothers were all dead; but, unknown to the Peerage-
books and the world, Hans Francis was no drowned
man, but very much alive and ready to step into his
heritage as " heir male of the body of the first Earl."
Such was the result, within a few weeks, of a jocular
remark made in Enniskillen over a glass of toddy and
a pipe.
Thus furnished with the vital clue, Mr. Bell com-
pleted his case by prolonged searches among parish
records and tombstones, until at last he was able to
submit complete proofs to Sir Samuel Romilly, the
great lawyer, from whom he soon received a most re-
assuring letter. " It appears to me," wrote Romilly,
" that the evidence which I before thought wanting
has now been supplied by you; and it does not occur
to me that any further search is necessary
I have written to Lord Huntingdon respecting his
taking the title; and, although there does not exist the
slightest doubt of his just claim, I have now rather
313
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
dissuaded him from using it before his claim is
established.'*
A few days later the Enniskillen storekeeper was
reading this letter, with the significant footnote in
Bell's handwriting, " D it, my dear Earl, I have
succeeded, and I claim my appointment as falconer!
My homage to the Countess. N.B."
So clearly-established was the claim that, when Mr.
Bell presented a petition to the Crown, the Attorney-
General was able within a few days to report to the
Regent: " Upon the whole of the case I am humbly
of opinion that the petitioner, Hans Francis Hastings,
has sufficiently proved his right to the title of Earl of
Huntingdon; and that it may be advisable, if your
Royal Highness be graciously pleased to do so, to
order a Writ of Summons to pass the Great Seal to
summon the said petitioner to sit in Parliament and
there enjoy the rank and privileges to the said title
belonging."
On the 7th of January, 1818, the Prince Regent
signed the Royal warrant; and a few days later the
Enniskillen storekeeper was making his stately pro-
gress, in his Peer's robes, up the floor of the House
of Lords to take the oaths and his place as twelfth Earl
of Huntingdon; while among the spectators in the
gallery was Nugent Bell, attorney, who had thus
romantically placed a coronet on the head of his friend.
CHAPTER XXXII
A TRAGEDY OF THE ALTAR
ON the far-reaching family-tree of the noble house of
Cathcart there is many a name that recalls a story of
more than ordinary romance from Sir Alan, whose
sword dealt such doughty strokes on Loudoun Hill six
centuries ago, to William, tenth Baron and first Earl
of his line, who won the laurels of war in the Peninsula
and at Copenhagen, and at St. Petersburg proved him-
self as astute in diplomacy as he was valiant in battle.
The Cathcarts have ever been brave soldiers,
" worthy and widht, stalwart and stout," revelling in
hard knocks, and always in the thickest of the fray,
from Loudoun Hill and Flodden Field, where two of
their bravest sons were " among the noble slain," to
Inkerman, where General Sir George drew his last
gallant breath on that black November day in 1854.
And the wives of these martial Cathcarts have been as
fair as their husbands have been brave, with the blood
of some of the proudest stocks of Scotland in their
veins.
In glancing down the list of these Cathcart dames,
the eye is arrested by a name which recalls a story of
strange romance that of the wife of Charles, eighth
315
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Baron. " This," says Sir Bernard Burke, " is the
lady of whom the extraordinary story is told of her
having been confined for many years by her last
husband, Colonel Maguire, in a lonely castle in the
fastnesses of Ireland."
The heroine of this strange adventure first opened
her eyes on the world in Battersea one day in the year
1692. She had for father a Mr. Malyn, a South wark
tradesman, who had prospered so well that he was able
to leave his business premises and instal his family in
a country home of some pretensions among the pleasant
fields of Battersea, where his four daughters grew to
vigorous and pretty girlhood.
Of the tradesman's daughters, Mary was by common
consent the most beautiful a high-spirited girl, with
a figure abounding in grace and vitality, and a face of
" cream and roses," from which a pair of blue eyes
looked out merrily and mischievously at the world.
It was little wonder that this beautiful daughter of the
well-gilded merchant had no lack of wooers to dance
attendance on her; or that she wore her orange-blossom
before she had long graduated from short frocks.
The first of Mary's four husbands was Mr. James
Fleet, a handsome young man, son of a most pros-
perous merchant in London City, who, as Sir John
Fleet, had served his year in the Lord Mayor's chair.
And thus was proud Mary Malyn, while still in her
3*5
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
'teens, installed as a lady of the manor in a goodly
mansion at Tewin, in Hertfordshire. But her first
taste of wedded life was destined to be as brief as it
was happy, for her husband left her a widow before
she had long passed her twentieth birthday.
She was not, however, long disconsolate. Before
she had worn her weeds many months, wooers came
flocking to the feet of the pretty widow, who to youth
and good looks now allied a substantial dower in gold
and lands. She had made her first adventure at the
altar for money; this time she determined she would
give her hand to no man who could not give her the
entree to good Society, whose doors were closed
against the tradesman's wife and daughter. And after
much dallying and coquetting, she bestowed it on
Captain Sabine, a scion of an old family, whose
brother, General Sabine, was one of the great men of
her county. With her second husband she spent many
more or less happy years, realising her small social
ambition and playing the Lady Bountiful with her
gold, until once again she was called upon to wear
widow's mourning; and this time with, it seemed, small
prospect of wearing a wedding-ring for any other man.
Mrs. Sabine was now on the borderland of middle-
age. Her figure had lost the graceful lines of youth;
her complexion had lost its roses. But she was still a
comely woman, with a sprightly wit and a clever
317
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
tongue; and once more wooers came to seek her hand,
and among them was a man who could, if she would,
place a coronet on her head. This titled lover was no
other than the eighth Lord Cathcart, a handsome man
little older than herself; and, although he was a
widower, and the father of four stalwart sons and as
many daughters, a great favourite at Court, and a
soldier of distinction.
To such a lover few women could long remain
obdurate; and certainly not the Hertfordshire widow,
who had long hankered after the splendours of Courts.
And thus it was that one day in the year 1739 Mary
Malyn made her third trip to the altar; this time to
leave the church a lady of title, the eighth on a proud
line of Baronesses. At last she had reached the goal
of her ambition; but, alas ! once again Fate was to prove
unkind. She had worn her new honours but a year
when her lord was taken from her side, and sent in
charge of an expedition against the Spanish King's
dominions in America, a land which he was fated never
to reach; for illness seized him, and he died on the out-
ward voyage, leaving his wife a widow for the third
time.
" I married my first husband for money/' she said
at this time; " my second for social position; my third
for a title. If I marry again, it shall be for love
alone." And before she had ceased to mourn her
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Cathcart husband, love came to her (or so she fondly
imagined) in the guise of a good-looking, fascinating
Irishman, whose blarney and tales of heroism quickly
turned the widow's middle-aged head. He was, he
told her, an officer in the Hungarian army and by far
the most valiant man in it, on his own showing; but
this foreign army rank, invested with glory as it was,
did not satisfy my lady, who, as evidence of her favour,
spent 2,000 in purchasing for him a Colonelcy in a
British regiment. Never did bride of seventeen go
more blithely to the altar with the man of her heart than
this thrice-wedded Baroness with her brave and ador-
ing Colonel. She had won gold and rank with her
charms; now she was to receive the crown of her desires
in a man's passionate love.
But before her honeymoon had waned disillusion had
dawned. The gay, lion-hearted soldier proved a cur
and a coward in the crucible of matrimony. With
brutal candour, he was quick to let her see that her
gold, and not herself, had been the lure that had
attracted him. " Do you imagine/' he blustered one
day, within a month of the wedding-bells, " I should
have married an old frump like you if you had not been
well-gilded? It's your money I want; and your
money I will have." And when she refused to open
her purse for she still had plenty of spirit left he
whipped out a pistol and presented it at her head.
3*9
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
But, in spite of her bold front, the Baroness was so
alarmed at her husband's violence that she secreted
all her valuables, hiding her jewels in the plaits of her
hair and in the linings of her petticoats. As if brutality
and threats were not outrage enough, the Colonel con-
ducted liaisons under the eyes of his wife, and intro-
duced his lights o' love into the house to play the spy
on her. When, thanks to the treachery of one of these
conspirators, the Colonel one day discovered his wife's
will and read its contents, his rage knew no bounds.
He assaulted her violently, threatened to blow her
brains out, and concluded by declaring that she was a
lunatic, and that he would have her " shut up in a
madhouse."
The poor lady's position had now become perilous in
the extreme. Each day brought its scenes of violence,
its threats, and its disgusting amours. But worse still
was in store for her. One day the Colonel invited his
wife to drive with him; and as he appeared in a more
amiable mood than usual, she consented little dream-
ing what her destination was to be. Mile after mile
was covered without any sign of return, until the
Baroness, in alarm, begged that the horses' heads
should be turned homewards. " Certainly not," was
the Colonel's violent answer. "I am going to
Chester, and to Chester you shall come with me ";
and in spite of her pleadings and tears the fate-
320
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
ful journey was continued to a destination and fate
she now shuddered to think of.
When days passed, and the Colonel and his wife did
not return home, the servants and neighbours grew
alarmed especially as Maguire's threats had become
common knowledge, and he had been seen in the
carriage, on the morning of the departure, gesticulating
fiercely at the Baroness. A magistrate was consulted;
and soon an attorney, armed with a writ, was in hot
pursuit of the fugitives, whom he overtook near
Chester, at a wayside inn where the Colonel had
stopped to change horses.
Ushered into the Colonel's presence, the man of law
asked permission to speak for a few moments with his
lady, a request which was met with a point-blank re-
fusal, coupled with violent language and threats. The
attorney, however, persisted with his demand, until at
last Maguire, after satisfying himself that the lawyer
did not know the lady by sight, consented. " Very
well," he said, " you may see her, since you insist
on it. But I warn you that it is no good. She will
tell you that she is going to Ireland with me of her
own free will, and that neither you nor anybody else
can stop her."
After a few moments' delay the attorney was con-
ducted to a neighbouring room, where a lady, with a
gracious bow, asked him his business. " Is it true,
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
madam," he asked, " that you are going to Ireland
with this gentleman of your own free will ? " " Per-
fectly true," was the answer. " Then, madam, I
have nothing more to say, except to express my regrets
for having troubled you. " And he bowed himself out
little dreaming that the lady he had interviewed was
a chambermaid, whom the crafty Colonel had bribed
and coached, during the few minutes' interval, to per-
sonate his unhappy wife.
Not content with thus hoodwinking the lawyer,
Maguire promptly sent a couple of stout fellows in
pursuit of him. The attorney was overtaken, soundly
beaten, and flung into a ditch; and, an hour later, his
papers were in the pocket of the abductor. Thus
secure from further interference with his designs, the
Colonel continued his journey to Ireland, and his
victim found herself installed in a dismal moated house
in the heart of a desolate country, separated by many
miles from the nearest habitation. In this gloomy
prison-house, hemmed in by high, unscalable walls and
locked gates, she spent the next few years, with a surly
gaoler and his wife as custodians, visited at intervals
by her husband, whose brutality and threats nearly
drove her over the verge of sanity.
Of the outside world she saw nothing, except an old
crone who came periodically to weed the overgrown
garden-paths; and through her she was able to send to
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
a trusted friend the jewels she had succeeded in hiding
from the Colonel. Over this period of her life, with
its leaden hours of misery and dread, with shattered
health and reason trembling in the balance, we must
pass hurriedly to that day in 1764 when release, long
despaired of, came at last. On that morning the
Colonel was found dead in his bed.
Concealment was no longer possible when his rela-
tives were summoned to his funeral. Lady Cathcart,
after long years of " hell on earth/' was at last a free
woman; and a week or two later the horses were being
taken from her carriage, and she was drawn in triumph
through the streets of Hertford by the jubilant friends
and neighbours of her happier days. She survived to
dance a minuet at Bath when long past her eightieth
birthday, and she was within sight of her hundredth
year when death at last came to her. But to her last
day it was dangerous to mention the word "marriage"
to the old lady, unless she was in a particularly amiable
mood, when she would say, " I think the devil owed
me a grudge, and wished to punish me for my sins! "
323
CHAPTER XXXIII
THE BEAUTIFUL SHERIDANS
IN her " Record of a Girlhood " Fanny Kemble gives
a charming account of an evening she spent at the
house of Mrs. Norton, " when a host of distinguished
public and literary men were crowded into the small
drawing-room, which was literally resplendent with
the light of Sheridan beauty, male and female."
Mrs. Sheridan, the mother of the " Three Graces,"
was there, more lovely than any but her daughters;
Lady Graham, their beautiful aunt; Mrs. Norton,
Mrs. Blackwood (Lady Dufferin), Georgiana Sheridan
(Duchess of Somerset), and Charles Sheridan, their
younger brother, a sort of younger brother of the
Apollo Belvidere. " Certainly," says Fanny Kemble,
" I never saw such a bunch of beautiful creatures all
growing on one stem. I remarked it to Mrs. Norton,
who looked complacently round her tiny drawing-
room and said, ' Yes, we are rather good-looking
people/ "
Such, eighty years ago, were the Sheridans, incom-
parably the best-looking family in England, with a
beauty inherited from their grandmother, Elizabeth
Linley, the " Nightingale of Bath," and with gifts and
graces of mind worthy of Richard Brinsley Sheridan,
324
THE HONORABLE MRS. NORTON
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the story of whose romantic wooing of the " Nightin-
gale " has already been told in a former volume.
Of the three daughters of handsome, witty, fascina-
ting Tom Sheridan (the " Nightingale's " son) it is
not easy to say which was the most lovely, since each,
in her way, was matchless. " The beauty of each,"
says the late Marquis of Dufferin, son of Helen
Sheridan, " was of a different type, but they were all
equally tall and stately. The Duchess of Somerset
had large, deep blue or violet eyes, black hair, black
eyebrows and eyelashes, perfect features, and a com-
plexion of lilies and roses. Mrs. Norton, on the con-
trary, was a brunette, with dark, burning eyes like her
grandfather's, a pure Greek profile, and a clear, olive
complexion. The brothers were all over six feet.
" My mother, though her features were less regular
than those of her sisters, was equally lovely and
attractive. Her figure was divine the perfection of
grace and symmetry. Her hands and feet were very
small, many sculptors having asked to model the
former."
It was Lord Dufferin's mother who, when describ-
ing herself and her sister to Disraeli, said, " You
see, Georgy's the beauty and Carry's the wit; and I
ought to be the good one, but I'm not." And per-
haps, if one must award the palm of beauty to one of
the "Graces," it should go to Georgy, who, as
Duchess of Somerset, was considered by many the
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
most supremely lovely woman of her day in England
and this, in spite of Disraeli's verdict that Lady
Dufferin was " the most beautiful and charming of
the three wonderful sisters " ; and also of that verdict
of Shelley, who said of Mrs. Norton, " I never met a
woman so perfectly charming, with so variable, but
always beautiful an expression."
That women so " divinely fair " should remain
long unappropriated was not to be expected. Each
in turn was led to the altar while still a girl, and each
entered the circle of the Peerage by the altar steps.
Helen was but seventeen, in the first flush of her
girlish charms, when she gave her hand to Com-
mander Price Blackwood, who succeeded his father
in the family Barony; and in much later years, when
she was a middle-aged woman, she made a second
dramatic marriage with Lord Gifford, heir to the
Tweeddale Marquisate, on his deathbed.
Caroline Sheridan found a husband in the Hon.
George Norton, a shiftless barrister, who crowned
his infamous treatment of her by a baseless charge,
in which his wife's name was shamefully associated
with that of Lord Melbourne ; and when a bedridden
woman, verging on seventy, and within three months
of her death, she became the wife of her old and
valued friend, Sir William Stirling-Maxwell. Mrs.
Norton, who for fifty years dazzled Society by her
326
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
brilliant gifts, and achieved fame by the magic of her
pen, was, says Charles Austen, " the most brilliant
woman I ever met; her brilliancy was like summer
lightning it dazzled, but it did not hurt."
Fascinating as are the life-stories of these two
Queens of Beauty, with their superlative gifts and
graces, we must pass to the youngest of the sisters,
Georgiana, who inherited in such full measure her
grandmother's dower of loveliness and her grand-
father's clever brain.
We have already seen a charming picture of
Georgiana by her nephew, the great diplomatist; but
no words can do justice to charms which baffled the
brushes of the most skilful artists of her day. As a
child, in her mother's home at Hampton Court,
Georgy won the hearts of all the Court gallants by
her fairy beauty and sylph-like grace ; and among her
many " upgrown " lovers was none other than the
Regent himself, who loved to take his little " Prin-
cess," as he called her, on his knee, and to steal a kiss
from her pretty, pouting lips.
A few years later we find her the acknowledged
belle of the children's ball which the Duke of
Clarence gave to the little Queen of Portugal; at
which she says, " Caroline and I had gold and green
wreaths with scarlet berries in our hair, and I had a
red velvet body a ' Marie Stuart/ which is the
3*7
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
fashion now and white satin skirt." A curious con-
trast to this Irish beauty must have been the girl
Queen of Portugal who, " although ten years old,
looked fourteen, and was dressed like a grown-up
woman, in a pink gauze gown, with her hair turned
up and flowers in it."
Among Georgiana's many lovers was the shy and
awkward Edward Adolphus, Lord Seymour, heir to
the Dukedom of Somerset, a young man who, apart
from his rank, was at a marked disadvantage com-
pared with his rivals. But what he lacked in per-
sonal attractions he made up by a devotion so great
that it completely won his lady's heart; and it was
not long before Georgiana was able to write to her
favourite brother :
" My darling Brinny, Your Georgy is going to be
turned into a chaperon. Lord Seymour, the Duke
of Somerset's son, asked me yesterday to marry him;
and I, being civil and polite, said ' Yes/ Joking
apart, I am going to marry him. He is very clever
and good. The Duke, his father, has no objection,
and is very kind indeed. So are his sisters; but my
acquaintances are rabid and frantic at my daring to
do such a thing; and they turn round after first con-
gratulating mamma, and say, ' Good Heavens, is
Lord Seymour mad? What a fool!' with other
pleasing intimations of their good wishes towards
3*8
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Thus simply and with such quaint humour does
the young beauty announce that she is to be the bride
of the heir to a Dukedom.
Less than a month later Georgiana, " dressed in
plain white satin, with no ornaments but a diamond-
brooch and earrings, beautiful blonde seduisantes,
and a magnificent blonde veil thrown over her head,
so large that it nearly reached her feet," was quietly
wedded to her lord in the back drawing-room of his
father's town-house, with a few relatives for specta-
tors. " I think," writes her sister, Lady Dufferin, " I
never saw anything so perfectly beautiful as she
looked." After the ceremony the young couple set
off for a six weeks' honeymoon to Wimbledon Park,
where, the bride says, " the bedstead in my room was
the bed of Lady Jane Seymour."
Thus we find the loveliest of the Sheridans trans-
ported from the seclusion of Hampton Court to the
splendours of ducal palaces, and to the centre of the
great world of fashion of which, for so many years,
she was to be so conspicuous an ornament. By right
of beauty and of rank she took at once the position
of a queen of society, a position which she filled with
a rare grace and dignity.
After she had been a wife nine years her crowning
triumph came, when she was chosen from the whole
world of fair women to preside as " Queen of
3 2 9
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Beauty " over that famous tournament in which Lord
Eglinton revived all the splendours of mediaeval
chivalry. The tournament, it is true, was a fiasco,
thanks to the pitiless deluge of rain which converted
the ground into a quagmire, and drenched alike
knightly plumes and ladies' finery; but through it all
the beauty of the " Queen " shone with dazzling
radiance, as if the elements themselves were power-
less to dim its lustre.
It was fresh from this triumph that Lady Seymour
engaged in that epistolary duel with a Lady Shuck-
burgh which has furnished so much amusement for
later generations. She had written to Lady Shuck-
burgh for the character of Mary Stedman, who had
applied to her for a situation as cook; and to this
perfectly polite letter the knight's lady had answered
that she was not accustomed to give characters to
" kitchen maids, this being always done by my house-
keeper, Mrs. Couch," to whom Lady Seymour should
apply for a character.
To this high and mighty letter Lady Seymour re-
torted, " Lady Seymour presents her compliments to
Lady Shuckburgh, and begs she will order her house-
keeper, Mrs. Pouch, to send the girl's character with-
out delay; otherwise, another young woman will be
sought for elsewhere, as Lady Seymour's children
cannot remain without their dinner because Lady
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Shuckburgh, ' keeping a professed cook and house-
keeper,' thinks a knowledge of the details of her estab-
lishment beneath her notice. Lady Seymour under-
stood from Stedman that, in addition to her other
talents, she was actually capable of dressing food fit for
the little Shuckburghs to partake of when hungry."
This scathing, and not quite " ladylike," note was
accompanied by a pencil-sketch, picturing the little
Shuckburghs, " with large turnip-looking heads and
cauliflower wigs voraciously scrambling for mutton-
chops provided by Mary Stedman, who is looking on
with serene satisfaction, while Lady Shuckburgh
appears in the distance with horror and dismay on her
face."
To this letter Lady Shuckburgh deigned no reply
herself, but left her housekeeper to take up the
cudgels, with this result : " Madame, Lady Shuck-
burgh has directed me to acquaint you that she de-
clines answering your note, the vulgarity of which is
beneath contempt. And, although it may be the
characteristic of the Sheridans to be vulgar, coarse,
and witty, it is not that of a ' lady/ unless she happens
to have been born in a garret and bred in the kitchen.
Mary Stedman informs me that your ladyship does
not keep either a cook or a housekeeper, and that you
only ^require a girl who can cook a mutton-chop. If
so, I apprehend that Mary Stedman, or any other
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
scullion, will be found equal to cook for, or manage
the establishment of, the Queen of Beauty. I am,
your ladyships, &c., ELIZABETH COUCH (not POUCH) ."
Such was the tournament in which the Queen of
Beauty herself couched a lance, and in which she
does not seem to have carried off the honours. But
a quick temper and a sarcastic tongue were among
the Duchess's few blemishes, and no doubt made
many enemies for her. An amusing and characteris-
tic sample of her sarcasm is given thus : One day
she ordered certain goods of a tradesman, which
were not sent home. On the following morning when
she visited the shop again to enquire the reason, the
proprietor was unable to trace the order. " May I
ask your Grace," he enquired, " who took the order ?
Was it a young gentleman with fair hair?" " No."
curtly answered the Duchess, " it was an elderly
nobleman with a bald head."
Splendid as was Georgiana's life with her in-
dulgent and worshipping husband, it was clouded by
more than one terrible tragedy. Her second son,
Lord Edmund St. Maur, was killed by a tiger in
India; and her eldest son died with tragic sudden-
ness in his mother's arms. One September night in
1869, Earl St. Maur was seized with a violent attack
of coughing, and "went to sleep in a little back
parlour, where I had a little iron bedstead put up.
Next morning at eight my maid ran into the room,"
33*
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
the mother says, " crying, ' the Earl is ill !' I hurried
down the two flights of stairs. ' He is down on the
floor ! ' A clay-cold hand clasps mine. ' Oh,
mother!' and he became speechless. My maid and
I raised him up, sitting against our knees. I sent a
pressing, urgent message to the doctor. I remained
three-quarters of an hour on my knees, supporting a
gasping, dying man."
For hours the lamp of life flickered, the agonised
mother " tearing up her nightdress for rags, cutting
the strings of her petticoats for the surgeons, waiting
on them herself because there were no servants."
And all to no purpose. Her son drew his last breath
in her arms. " No pauper," exclaimed the heart-
broken mother, " could have died more denuded of
chances; no wandering Hagar could have seen her
son perish more helplessly or more alone."
For fifteen years the Duchess survived this crown-
ing tragedy. Robbed of her children, her beauty but
a memory, she presented a brave, smiling face to the
world, until, just at the moment when she had an-
nounced her intention "to live again at last," death
came to claim her. " On Sunday morning," her
bereaved husband wrote to his brother-in-law,
" Georgy passed away in a quiet doze. She had suf-
fered so much during the last eight months, and had
nearly lost her sight, that it is for her a comfort, but
to us a great loss."
333
CHAPTER XXXIV
THE COMTESSE DE GRAMONT
AMONG the Court ladies who have danced their way
across the stage in our Peerage Drama there have
been so many whose fairness was only matched by
their frailty, and whose charms have been the guerdon
of the highest bidder, that it is a pleasure to turn to
one Queen of Beauty who proved that she could carry
an unspotted fame through all the temptations of the
most vicious Court England has ever known, while
sacrificing none of the supremacy which is the dower
of supreme loveliness.
Such an embodiment of all the graces and all the
virtues was Elizabeth Hamilton, who came from
France with Charles's exiled Court in 1660 to shed a
lustre on the restored glories of our Stuart Kings.
She had spent the years of her early girlhood with
her father, Sir George Hamilton, a younger son of the
Earl of Abercorn, and with her brothers and sisters
in the Paris Faubourg St. Jacques, sharing the fallen
fortunes of her Sovereign, and waiting patiently for
the day that should see him restored to his throne.
And even as a girl her beauty, her winsomeness, and
her gaiety captivated all hearts.
334
LA BELLE HAMILTON
AFTERWARDS
COUNTESS DE GRAMMONT
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
" Everyone was her lover," says Sir John Reresby ;
" from the King himself to the youngest Page. In
his Majesty's frequent fits of gloom she was the only
one who could bring a smile to his lips by her infec-
tious and irrepressible high spirits. I, myself, was
her veriest slave, and would gladly have made her
my v/ife had my fortune permitted."
When at last the dark days of exile gave place to
the splendid era of the Restoration, Elizabeth Hamil-
ton's beauty, although she had still to see her
twentieth birthday, had reached its dazzling zenith.
" She had," says her brother Anthony, " the finest
shape, the loveliest neck, and the most beautiful arms
in the world. She was majestic and graceful in all
her movements; and she was the original which all
the ladies copied in their taste and art of dress. Her
forehead was open, white, and smooth; her hair was
well set, and fell with ease into that natural order
which it is so difficult to imitate. Her complexion
had a freshness not to be equalled by borrowed
colours ; her eyes were lively, and capable of express-
ing whatever she pleased; her mouth was full of
graces, and her contour uncommonly perfect; nor
was her nose, which was small, delicate, and turned
up, the least ornament of so lovely a face. In fine,
her air, her carriage, and the numberless graces dis-
persed over her whole person made the Chevalier de
335
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Gramont (her future husband) not doubt but that she
was possessed of every other qualification."
Such, in the cold medium of prose, was this
daughter of the House of Abercorn when she joined
the galaxy of fair women that flitted round the throne
of the now Merry Monarch in the first years of his
reign. There was no Court in Europe which con-
tained so many lovely women as this of Whitehall
when the second Charles was new to his crown from
La Belle Stuart, whose childish beauty and wayward-
ness played such havoc with the King's susceptible
heart, to Frances Jennings, whose radiant and more
mature charms drew lovers to her feet as irresistibly
as the magnet draws the needle.
But Elizabeth Hamilton was Queen, by common
consent, of them all, with a beauty more splendid
than theirs, and graces of mind which none of them
could hope to rival. Every gallant at Court was her
avowed lover from the Duke of Richmond, whose
mourning for his first wife was still new, to Henry
Jermyn, King of Restoration beaux, whose flowing
wig, clouded cane, and daintily-perfumed laces were
ever in the wake of the new divinity.
Richard Talbot, the handsomest man of his day,
and the idol of every Court lady, was driven to dis-
traction by her coldness and transported to heaven by
her smiles; Henry Howard tried in vain to dazzle her
336
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
eyes with the prospect of a Duchess's coronet; and
there was no man &t Whitehall who was not equally
eager to secure the prize with his good looks, his
rank, or his riches.
One of the most constant and ardent of her slaves
was no other than James, Duke of York, the King's
brother, and his successor on the throne, who had
begun his wooing years earlier in the Faubourg St.
Jacques, almost before Elizabeth had ceased to nurse
her dolls. Now that she had reached the perfection
of her beauty, his ardour was increased tenfold. He
was her very shadow, following her everywhere; and
when his sighs and oglings and pretty speeches made
no impression on her, he would bombard her with
billet-doux, full of tenderness and protestations of
undying love. Never was maiden's heart subjected
to such an obdurate siege, or with smaller success ; for
she made it abundantly clear to Prince and courtier
alike that her favours were for no man who could
not possess her heart with them; and that heart she
was in no hurry to give into any man's keeping.
But to Elizabeth Hamilton as to so many other
" impregnable " maidens the " Prince Charming "
came at last in the guise of the Comte de Gramont,
one of the least likely, one would have thought, of all
her legion of suitors to win the prize. Gramont was
a late comer in the lists of love ; for he did not make
337
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
his appearance at Whitehall until Elizabeth Hamil-
ton had enjoyed a full year of her queendom.
He was a man of no physical attractiveness in-
deed, in later years, his face was once described as
" that of an ape," although another description credits
him with " laughing eyes, well-made nose, beautiful
mouth, and a little dimple in his chin." And he was
just twice her age. But, though he lacked both youth
and comeliness, he was an adept in all the arts of
love, a courtier to his finger-tips, with a tongue skilled
in the framing of witty speeches and subtle flatteries.
He had, moreover, the magnetism of personality,
which attracts women more potently than mere per-
fection of face and figure.
It was at a Court ball that Gramont first set eyes
on the queenly figure and grace of the woman who
was to become his wife; and at sight of her he was
undone. The impression he made on her was very
different; for, it is said, she asked Jermyn, who was
still dangling hopelessly at her heels, " Who is that
ugly man, who looks so like a monkey?" An unflat-
tering speech which later came to Gramont's ears.
" So," said the Count, " she calls me a monkey, does
she? Well, I must show her some of my tricks."
Wounded vanity and such a passion as now fired
the breast of Gramont are a formidable armoury for
any maiden's heart, however strongly entrenched, to
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
fight against. And so La Belle Hamilton found
when the Frenchman laid siege to it with all the skill
learned in twenty years of woman conquest; for, ill-
favoured as he was, there was no gallant in all France
who had won more laurels in the arena of love. Con-
tempt and indifference soon gave way to a pleased com-
plaisance, and complaisance to a warmer feeling,
until, within a few months of setting eyes on the
"monkey," Elizabeth Hamilton was ready to give
her life into his keeping. Beautiful as she had been
before, the love that had come into her life made her
still more bewitching, until Henry Howard ex-
claimed, " Surely nothing more perfect has ever
trodden earth in woman's guise!"
During the three years that Miss Hamilton spent
at Whitehall her gaiety was ever the life of the Court.
There was no escapade of which she was not the rul-
ing spirit, whether it was a night adventure in London
with a fellow-madcap, or a practical joke on a grave
Court official. Of one of these jokes an amusing and
characteristic story is told.
Among the women of fashion who frequented the
Court was Lady Muskerry, whose vanity was only
equalled by her grotesque appearance. She was
abnormally stout and short, with a sallow, uncomely
face, disfigured by an abominable squint, and with
one leg shorter than the other. But, unattractive as
339
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
she was, a caricature of a woman, she was obsessed
by the idea that her charms were irresistible, and she
spent a fortune in embellishing them with the costliest
finery and jewels that money could buy.
My lady's indignation may be imagined when a
Court masque ball was announced to which she re-
ceived no card of invitation. She fretted and fumed
and shed tears of mortification, declaring that some
jealous enemy of her own sex had brought this slight
upon her. She was even on the point of seeking
audience with the Queen herself, to demand the invi-
tation which was due to her rank and fascinations,
when, to her inexpressible delight, a messenger
arrived bearing not only the longed-for invitation, but
a special request that she should not fail to honour
the ball with her appearance. The character assigned
to her ladyship was that of a Princess of Babylon,
and her partner none other than the Comte de
Gramont.
So overjoyed was she that she kissed the precious
card rapturously, and shed tears over it before order-
ing her coach, to purchase the necessary finery. But
her first journey was to her cousin, Elizabeth Hamil-
ton, to impart the good news to her, and to get a
few hints as to the appropriate dress for a Babylonian
Princess. Needless to say, Miss Hamilton shared
the good lady's joy to the full, and sent her away with
340
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
such a conception of the required costume as would
have shocked even the Queen of Sheba herself.
On the fateful evening the gorgeous Muskerry
coach, with its four horses in their gilded trappings,
dashed up to the palace door just as Gramont, attired
as a Spanish Grandee, was entering. " Monsieur de
Gramont/' shouted a high-pitched voice, "stop one
moment; you are my partner." A glance at the
speaker was sufficient. The Comte took to his heels,
and never stopped until he found himself in the pres-
ence of the King, to whom he declared that he had
been stopped at the door of the palace by a " devil
of a phantom," who said that he was to be her part-
ner. " Your Majesty should just see her," he said,
amid shrieks of laughter from the surrounding cour-
tiers. " She must have at least sixty ells of gauze
and silver tissue about her, not to mention a sort of
pyramid upon her head, adorned by a hundred
thousand baubles."
" Who can it be ?" was the question which passed
round the circle of dancers. Charles declared the
" devil of a phantom " must be the Duchess of New-
castle, an eccentric lady whose conceptions of dress
were usually startling. "And I," said Lord Mus-
kerry, who was standing near, "will wager it is
another fool, for -I am much mistaken if it is not my
wife." And before the lady could be summoned for
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
inspection, he had made his way to the waiting coach,
to find his worst fears confirmed. A minute later
the " Babylonian Princess " was being driven hur-
riedly home, where she was locked in her bedroom,
with a sentry at the door to make sure of her for the
night. To her last day Lady Muskerry never knew
that the flattering card of invitation was forged by the
mischievous hand of Elizabeth Hamilton, who was
also responsible for the Babylonian finery and the
shock to the Comte de Gramont's nerves.
Now that Gramont had won his prize, his ardour
seems to have cooled ; to such an extent, indeed, that,
when he paid his next visit to France, he quite forgot
even to say " good-bye " to the lady whose heart he
had won. He had no sooner reached Dover, how-
ever, than he heard the sound of galloping horses
behind him; and before he had well dismounted,
found himself face to face with two of her brothers.
" Chevalier de Gramont," said George Hamilton
sternly, " is there nothing you have forgotten in
London?" "Pardon!" was the prompt reply,
accompanied by a sweeping bow ; " pardon, monsieur,
but I have forgotten your sister."
And, thus reminded, the next morning he was rid-
ing back to London to do his neglected duty at the
altar. To quote the somewhat satirical words of
Anthony Hamilton, one of the lady's brothers, "the
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
Comte de Gramont, as a reward for a constancy he
had never before known, and which he never after-
wards practised, found Hymen and Love united in
his favour, and was at last blessed with the possession
of Miss Hamilton."
The rest of our heroine's story may be told in a few
words. Elizabeth, Comtesse de Gramont, passed the
remainder of her long life partly in England and
partly in France, turning to piety as a refuge from
the worldliness and heartlessness of her husband.
She bore him a son and two daughters, one of whom
found a husband in Henry Howard, Earl of
Strafford ; and she survived to see the crown of Eng-
land worn by Queen Anne, daughter of the Prince
who had wooed her so importunately in the too brief
years when she was Queen of Beauty.
343
CHAPTER XXXV
A DUCAL ROUE
Wharton, the scorn and wonder of our days,
Whose ruling passion was the lust of praise,
*******
A fool, with more of wit than half mankind,
Too rash for thought, for action too refined ;
A tyrant to the wife his heart approves,
A rebel to the very King he loves ;
He dies, sad outcast of each Church and State,
And harder still ! flagitious yet not great.
SUCH are the scathing words in which Pope pictures
Philip, the " eccentric, witty, and profligate " Duke
of Wharton, who was surely the most remarkable
jumble of gifts and vices that ever masqueraded in the
guise of man. Polished orator and wit, courtier to his
ringer- tips, dowered with every grace of body and mind
to win honour and high repute, he was content to drift
through his short life a profligate among profligates,
the sport of every mad impulse that seized him, false to
country and friends, to every woman who crossed his
baleful path, and to himself, changing his religion as
lightly as he changed his coat, and, having been cradled
in Calvinism, ending his days a penitent Catholic.
Philip was the degenerate descendant of a long line
344
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
of noble and knightly Whartons, who had been seated
on their broad Westmorland lands for many a long cen-
tury, and one of whom, Sir Thomas, had won a Barony
for doughty deeds against the Scots when the eighth
Henry was King. His ancestors had mated with the
daughters of such famous houses as Talbot, Devereux,
and Clifford; and his mother was a Loftus, daughter of
Lord Lisburn. He had, moreover, for father
" Honest Tom " Wharton, who, profligate as he was,
was a pillar of the Protestant Church, and by his
loyalty to the Crown won for himself the coronet of a
Marquis. Philip thus succeeded to a goodly heritage
of virtues; and, that he might not stray from the
straight path his forefathers had followed, he was
rigidly brought up, like his father before him,
" among Geneva bands, lank hair, upturned eyes,
nasal psalmody, and sermons three hours long.'* He
took to his books as a young duck takes to water; and
by the time he was thirteen was a very prodigy of learn-
ing; steeped in classics, mathematics, and metaphysics,
and reeling off rhetoric like a seasoned parliamentary
orator.
But the youthful hope of the Whartons was not
destined long to remain such a pattern of the proprie-
ties. He had barely seen his sixteenth birthday when
he tost his heart to the pretty and penniless daughter
of a Major-General Holmes; and, flinging away his
345
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
books, he ran off with her to London, where he found
a down-at-heels Fleet Prison parson willing to marry
the runaways for half-a-crown and a bottle of wine,
with the ring of a window-curtain for wedding-ring.
After a few weeks of honeymooning, however, Philip
Wharton, ex-student and " boy-saint," began to
weary of his girl-wife, and to sigh for other lips and
other arms; and before he had been a husband half a
year we find him packing his bride off to her home and
engaging in one sordid intrigue after another
beginning, in fact, that career of debauchery to which
alone he was constant for the remainder of his misspent
life.
This violent shock to their hopes proved fatal to
Philip's parents, who quickly followed each other to
the grave; and before the prodigal son had reached his
seventeenth birthday he found himself a double
Marquis, Earl, Viscount and Baron, and in possession
of a revenue of 16,000 a year. He had the ball at his
feet, and meant to kick it right merrily, laughing at the
provision of his father's will that he should go
to Geneva to finish his education, with an austere
Huguenot pastor as tutor. It was in a state of high
glee and anticipation that the young lord turned his
back on England and set foot on Dutch soil, in spite
of the grim face that accompanied him. In Holland
and Germany the handsome boy with the charming
346
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
manners was made much of wherever his journeying
took him. Ladies smiled on him; princelings and
courtiers fawned on him as they emptied his purse at
the card-table and drank his health in a third bottle of
good wine; and when one Grand Duke presented him
with a knightly Order in exchange for a regal present,
the silly boy's head was completely turned. His cup
of joy was quite full when one day he gave his tutor the
slip and escaped to Lyons, leaving behind him a pet
bear to keep the dominie company on his further
travels.
At last he was free to " fling his legs " as he pleased;
and the first use he made of his new liberty was to
throw overboard his loyalty to his king, and ingratiate
himself with the Pretender, who was then holding his
mock Court at Avignon. A gracious letter, accom-
panied by the present of a splendid charger, had the
desired sequel in an invitation to the Court, where the
young lord was received with open arms. The son of
" Honest Tom " Wharton, one of the bitterest
enemies of the Stuart House, was an adherent well
worth securing; and before the Marquis had been many
days his guest, the Pretender conferred on him the
Dukedom of Northumberland, with such compli-
mentary speeches as transported him to the seventh
heaVen.
From Avignon the new Duke rode to Paris to pay
347
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
homage to James II.'s Queen, and incidentally to
drink deep of the pleasures of that city of gaiety. He
threw himself into every kind of dissipation, flinging
his gold about with prodigal hands drinking, gaming,
philandering, until his purse, which his trustees kept
none too well supplied, was empty. Then, in his
extremity, he took his coaxing tongue to Mary
Beatrix, the Stuart Queen; and, full of zeal for the
Jacobite cause, persuaded her to lend him ^2,000 to
raise which sum she had to pawn all her remaining
jewels on his solemn undertaking that every penny
should go to promote the cause of her exiled House.
A few hours later the Duke was staking the price of
his infamy in one of the lowest gaming-houses in Paris,
and boasting that " he would remain a Jacobite only
as long as the money remained unpaid! "
After exhausting all the lowest so-called pleasures of
Paris, the Duke shook the dust of France off his feet
for a time; and we find him installed in the Irish House
of Lords as Marquis of Catherlogh, where, boy as he
was, he won immediate fame by his eloquent support
of the Government and his championship of the Han-
overian King a loyalty which so pleased George I.
that he raised the youth of nineteen to the Dukedom of
Wharton. Two years later he stood in England with
a reputation as one of the leading orators and states-
men of his day, and was winning laurels as the most
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
eloquent speaker in the English House of Peers and,
at the same time, infamy as the most dissolute man in
town, a haunter of low resorts, a reckless gambler, and
a drunkard.
Careless of his fame as a statesman, his only
ambition was to be a ringleader of vice; and this
ambition he realised to the full when he was elected
President of the infamous " Hell Fire Club/' an
association of the most abandoned evil-livers in
London. It was after a night's debauch at this
supreme haunt of vice that Wharton made perhaps his
most powerful and eloquent speech in favour of a
Bill for suppressing profligate societies. With dis-
gusting hypocrisy, he proclaimed himself the champion
of virtue, and supported his arguments with copious
texts, read with unctuous voice from an old family
Bible. A few hours later he was lying dead drunk in
a house of ill-fame, the sport and derision of his low
associates.
Meanwhile, the Duke's profligacy was draining his
purse to such an extent that he was forced to sell one
estate after another. His library and pictures came
under the auctioneer's hammer; and finally his property
was vested in trustees, who cut down his allowance to
a beggarly 1,200 a year. His neglected wife had
died of grief and shame; and his debauchery had
created so much scandal that in 1724 he was glad to
349
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
escape once more to the Continent. Here he resumed
the role of ardent Jacobite; and as Ambassador of King
James III. was received with distinction at the Courts
of Vienna and Madrid. When an order under the
Privy Seal was sent to summon him to England, we
are told, " His Grace, being in a coach when it was
delivered to him, contemptuously threw it into the
street without opening it, and soon after declared him-
self a Roman Catholic." " I would rather," he
wrote to a friend, " carry a musket in an old Muscovite
regiment than wallow in riches by the favour of the
Usurper " the " Usurper," be it noted, being the
King whose valiant champion he had been a few
months earlier, and who had rewarded his loyalty by
a Dukedom.
At the Court of Madrid this ducal roue and traitor
succumbed to the charms of Miss O' Byrne, the penni-
less daughter of an Irish gentleman, and Maid of
Honour to the Spanish Queen. When Her Majesty
refused her assent to the match, Wharton vowed that
he would kill himself or starve himself to death; and
actually took to what he declared was his deathbed
until the Queen relented. Within an hour of receiv-
ing the good news he was up and about again, as well
as ever, and was attending Mass as a preliminary to
writing to his sister, " Nothing shall ever tempt me to
forsake the religion wherein I was educated." But
35<>
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
his new Duchess was as powerless to reform her hus-
band as her predecessor had been. At Rome, where
he now journeyed, he shocked everyone by his drunken
orgies and his amours, until the city of the Popes
became too hot for him; and, with an empty purse, he
went to offer his sword to the Spanish King, then pre-
paring to besiege Gibraltar.
Here, as Philip's aide-de-camp, he amazed the
Spaniards by his reckless courage, probably inspired
by his cups. Once, we are told, he walked, alone and
unarmed, up to the English lines and hurled taunts
and insults at his own countrymen, proclaiming his
name, and walking back as coolly as if he were
promenading in Hyde Park. Such cold-blooded
treachery as this could only have one sequel. The
Duke was indicted for high treason, and a sentence of
outlawry was pronounced against him. In vain he
now grovelled to Walpole, our Ambassador at Paris,
begging him to intercede with the King, and vowing
that his greatest wish was to ' ' pass the evening of my
days under the shadow of his Royal protection." All
the answer he got was the cold message: "His
Majesty does not think fit to receive any application
from him." Even the Pretender now turned away
from him in disgust, advising him to return to Eng-
land, as he had no use for him.
Thus stripped of all his honours, and of all supplies,
35 1
ROMANCES OF THE PEERAGE
herding with the scum of the barracks, scorned by his
brother officers, despised by even his low associates,
Philip Wharton, twofold Duke, Marquis, Earl,
Viscount, and Baron, spent the last sordid days of his
misspent life. In 1730 his health, undermined by his
excesses, broke down. He started on a last pilgrim-
age to Catalonia to drink medicinal waters, but his
strength failed, and he was picked up unconscious on
the roadside by a party of Benedictine monks. A few
days later, after a brief interval of penitence, he drew
his last breath in the monastery of Aragon-Poblet,
leaving no single soul to mourn his loss, but leaving
the memory of such a wanton squandering of gifts and
opportunities as the world has rarely known.
THE END
Printed by Ebenezer Baylis & Son, Trinity Works. Worcester, and London.
At all Libraries and Booksellers.
IMPOfiTANT ANNOUNCEMENTS
BY
MESSRS
Holdeo & HardiDgbaro
Fair Ladies of the Winter Palace
By DP. A. S. RAPPOPORT
Author of "Royal Lovers and Mistresses," "The Love Affairs
of the Vatican." etc.
In demy 8vo., cloth gilt, with 16 illustrations on art paper,
16/- net
Eh-. Rappoport in this work introduces us to the Court of
the Romanoffs. The fair ladies of the winter palace, Empresses
and Princesses, splendid, dazzling and unscrupulous, pass before
us. While relating, however, the stories of the gilded beauties
who crowded the Courts of Peter the Great and his successors,
the author also acquaints us with the history of woman in Russia,
her former state of slavery and her gradual emancipation and com-
parative freedom. From the terents, or secluded apartments,
where the Tsaritzas and Tsarevnors of the 17th century were
kept prisoners, leading a sad and monotonous existence, we are
taken to the brilliant and dissolute Courts of Anna Ivansona and
Elizabeth Petrovna, where the former slaves ruled as mistresses.
"The author has written a work full of interesting historical anec-
dotes and piquant episodes. Both the lover of light and piquant
stories and the student of the evolution of history will find much
to interest them in these pages.
The Loves of the Poets
and the Painters
By "LE PETIT HOMME ROUGE"
(ERNEST A. YIZETELLY)
Author of " Republican France," "The Court of the Tuileries," etc.
In demy 8vo., cloth gilt, illustrated, 12/6 net.
In this attractive work Mr. Ernest Vizetelly (" Le Petit
Homme Rouge ") makes further excursions into the realm of ro-
mantic biography which he has so successfully explored in one
and another direction, in previous well-known books. The subject
he has this time chosen is one which should appeal strongly to
many readers. The poets and the painters have always been
among the foremost exponents of the great eternal theme of love
It has been sung through the ages by an infinity of the former,
whilst many of the latter have, in varying ways, striven to illus-
trate it. Nevertheless, how far their own particular loves have
vied with the ideals of their genius remains a moot point, which
Mr. Vizetelly has carefully examined in this brilliant book. Here
will be found some of the most beautiful romances of actual life,
side by side with some of the most sordid stories for which
human weakness has been responsible, the whole constituting, as
it were a vivid and varied panorama of love in many ages, many
lands, and many contrasting guises.
Apostolic Religious Instruction
By The Rev. ROBERT CRAIG, M.A., D.D.
EDINBURGH
IERLY PROFESSOR OF BIBLICAL CRITICISM AND NEW TESTAMENT EXEGESIS
HE HALL OF THE EVANGELICAL UNION OF SCOTLAND ; EXAMINER IN THE
ASHIRE INDEPENDENT COLLEGE, MANCHESTER; AND MEMBER OF THE
EDUCATIONAL POLICY COMMITTEE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW;
[OR OF "REGENERATION. ITS CONDITIONS AND METHODS"; "ROCK PLANTS
i GOSPEL ROOTS" ; AND "A HISTORY OF ORATORY IN PARLIAMENT, 1213 TO 1913
In crown 8vo, Cloth Gilt, 6/-
This important book into which its late author has put his
best work will arouse much interest especially in Scotland where
Dr. Robert Craig died suddenly last year in his vestry. This beau-
tiful book shows great industry and research and will be found ex-
tremely useful to Ministers and Students as well as laymen.
IMPORTANT NEW WORKS
In demy 8vo. Cloth gilt. Illustrated. 16/- net.
Woman under Polygamy
By WALTER M. GALLICHAN
Author of " Modern Woman," " The Story of Sevilla." etc.
This volume is a careful and impartial survey of
plural marriage as practised to-day in the East and under
the Mohammedan faith. The subject is treated especially
in regard to the position of women in the harem and
the Zenana and the author has collected the opinions
and the testimony of women possessing an intimite
knowledge of polygamy in its domestic and social aspects.
The growth of the Feminist movement in the Eastern
nations is a notable social phenomenon of far-reaching
significance. Views of the upholders as well as the
critics and denunciations of polygamous marriage are
arrayed and dispassionately examined. The introductory
section of the work treats upon the biological origin
of polygamy ; and the inquiry traces the system from
primitive people to cultured modern races.
Romances of the Peerage
By THORNTON HALL, F.S.A,
Author of " Love Affairs of the Courts of Europe "
In demy 8vo., cloth gilt, 12/6 net.
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.
The Women of Napoleon I
By HECTOR FLEISCHMANN
Translated by Dr. A. S. RAPPOPORT
WITH MANY FULL PAGE PLATES
In demy 8vo., cloth gilt, 12/6 net.
3
" One of th most remarkable Books published for a long
time . . . the testimony of other travellers bears out its
statement. "The Standard.
3rd EDITION NOW READY
The Real South Africa
By AMBROSE PRATT,
WITH INTRODUCTION BY THE PRIME MINISTER OF THE
AUSTRALIAN COMMONWEALTH
In Demy 8vo. Cloth Gilt, Eight Illustrations and Map
10s 64 Net
DAILY TELEGRAPH." South Africa should be grateful for
this book. He gives as the atmosphere of an illimitable land
where savage nature still dwarfs civilization, and over which brood
spirits of ancient terror and mystery."
A FINE WORK ON A BURNING QUESTION
The Black Peril
By GEORGE WEBB HARDY
Crown 8vo. Cloth Gilt. 6/- Net.
An outspoken work. The relations between the Black and
White races are strongly displayed. A purposeful novel which
should awaken the moral conscience of the Nation.
Very large orders are being received from S. Africa and the
Colonies for this work which treats ably and intimately with the
subject of the Black Peril.
4
NEW NOVELS
In Crown 8vo, strongly bound in handsome cloth gilt
SIX SHILLINGS EACH
A NEW FULL-LENGTH NOVEL
By DOLF WYLLARDE,
Author of "The Career of Beauty Darling,""Mafoota," etc.
It was the Time of Roses
Now published for the first time in Book form.
THEODORE FLATAU'S New Novel
The Thrice Born
By the Author of "The Soul of the Dancer."
A virile and masterly study of character of passionate and
complex character. The story, situated in Egypt and England, is
full of action and colour, and vividly depicts the struggles of a
modern woman against her destiny. "The Thrice-born" is a
finely-told tale, interwoven with the theory of re-incarnation and
brimming with vitality. It possesses striking pen-pictures of both
East and West, and incidentally exposes the great scandal of
fashionable Egypt of to-day. A fitting companion to "The Soul
of the Dancer," which was reviewed as " a work of genius."
5
New 6 - Novels
This first English version of a famous and much
admired French romance, rivals in popularity the
immortal "Three Musketeers" of Dumas.
Blush Rose
The English version has been prepared by Mr. Ernest
Vizetelly so well known as the translator of Zola's
novels, a guarantee of its many qualities.
By " A WHISPER " Author of " Black Mark '
Ffynon The Sin Eater
1st. Edition at once Exhausted a second at Press.
The Lady of Grosvenor Place
Society in London. By a Titled Member of it
Who for the present remains anonymous
This novel is causing a sensation, dealing as it does with
the foibles of Society; Society people and manners. By one
with an intimate knowledge.
6
New 6/- Novels
A GREAT RUSSIAN NOVEL
Translated by Dr. A. S. RAPPOPORT
Princes of the Stock Exchange
By NEMIROVICH DANCHENKO
By one of the best Russian novelists. The work gives a vivid
description of the activities of the financiers. The Author merci-
lessly lashes the morals or rather lack of morals of members of the
Stock Exchange whose sole aim in life is money. But the world
of finance is not without its heroes and heroines, and the romance
of a beautiful heroine, a Jeanne d' Arc of the Stock Exchange,
forms the subject of this fascinating novel. The reader is also
introduced to St. Petersburg society.
The Purple Light
By BUCHAN LANDOR
Author of "The Mystic of Prague,"
In order to save her mother's life, Vida Colinton.
a charming young girl of romantic temperament, breaks
off her engagement to a penniless artist and marries a
wealthy Peer. When too late she realises the profound
tragedy of her choice and Mrs. Colinton dies before
she is able to disclose the secret of the Purple Light
that secret which was to have brought her daughter
happiness. When Vida attempts to solve the mystery
for herself she meets with various strange adventures,
but at last fate determines her destiny and love crowns
her for his own.
7
NEW 6- Novels
A MOST POWERFUL NOVEL
Rebellion By JOSEPH MEDILL PATTERSON
' ' This remarkable novel has a great purpose. It deals with an
illused and disgusted Wife's Revolt against the Church's Ban on
Divorce and Re-marriage when her husband's cruelty has turned
her love to hate. There is a powerful denouement when the Wife
rebels and gives her love to the ' Other Man ' who has come into
the fettered woman's life.
The Novel of CECIL RALEIGH'S
Greatest Drury Lane Drama of Modern Times
The Whip
By RICHARD PARKER.
WITH 6 ILLUSTRATIONS FROM THE PLAY.
This Novel will interest the many thousands who saw this
successful drama and those who have not yet seen the play
will find the book a fascinating one.
The Money Hunt
By KINETON PARKES
Author of " Potiphar's Wife.'* etc.
"The money Hunt," is one of the last the author wrote
before leaving the moorlands of North Staffordshire for Devonshire.
The scenery of "The Money Hunt" is that of the moorlands, as
was that of Mr. Parkes's previous novels, full of excellent
humour and with illustrations.
8
New 6 - Novels
A WORK OF GREAT INTEREST
Love's Responsibilities
By Mrs. STUART MENZIES
Police Work from Within
With some Reflections on Woman, the Law & Lawyers
By HARGRAVE L. ADAM
10 illustrations on art paper. Crown 8vo,
cloth gilt, 6/-
Venusberg, The Syren City
A FINE BOOK OF MONTE CARLO LIFE
By CHILOSA
By COLONEL J. S. P. MACKENZIE
Author of " Wild Flowers at a Glance," etc.
British Orchids HOV
Illustrated in Colour by Miss C. E. TALBOT PONSONBY.
The Coloured Plates are Mounted. Size of Book, 12in by lOin.
SI- net
6/- Novels
A Powerful New Novel of South African Life,
Red Pearls
By CHARLOTTE MANSFIELD
Author of " Love and a Woman," " The Girl and
the Gods," etc.
Crown 8vo. f cloth gilt,
Love's Victory
By GERTRUDE HOLLIS
The Times says " The moral may be called superlatively
excellent."
The Winning of Gwenora
By "THE NEW ALLEN RAINE
(EDITH C. KENYON)
Author of "The Wooing of Mifanwy " etc.,
Daffodil's Love Affairs
By LOUISE M. STACPOOLE-KENNY
3rd. Edition.
The Straight Race
By KATHLTN RHODES
Author of " The Wax Image," etc.
10
6 - Novels.
A Most Successful First Novel, by a sister of the
popular novelist, Kathlyn Rhodes (author of "The
Straight Race" Now in its Third Edition)
A Vase Of Clay By HYLDA RHODES
"Well written. Never dull. Pleasingly done.
Much humour." Scotsman
THERE IS A RUN ON FARREN LE BRETON'S
FRUITS OF PLEASURE
In consequence of some of the Libraries having restricted the
circulation of " FRUITS OF PLEASURE." the Publishers wrote
to the two readers upon whose recommendation the manuscript
had been accepted. The following are extracts from their replies :
1. ' As a Churchman. I see no objection to the Book. In fact,
it is to be commended for the lesson it teaches as to the possibil-
ity of those who have fallen to rise to higher things. The heroine's
repentance and her straightforwardness to her first lover at the end
the book are worthy of all praise."
2. "In "Fruits of Pleasure" lies a deep moral lesson. I have
no hesitation in saying that the reading of this book will have quite
as beneficial an influence upon the present freedom-loving gener-
ation as reams of sermons or a library of homilies."
Love and My Lady
By Sybil Campbell Lethbridge
Author of the ' ' Shoreless Sea. ' '
TRUTH says, ' ' We are in very Royal circles in ' Love and
Lady,' and Mrs. Sybil Campbell Lethbridge disillusions us much lesj>
frequently than is usually the case in stories of Kings and Em-
perors. The diplomatic intrigue and Lady Margaret's own
character are described with unusual vigour, and leave the reader
with all the complacency of the cat who has successfully eaten
the canary."
The Boomerang
By E. KATHARINE BATES
2/- Net Novels, Cloth Bound
With Coloured Artistic Jackets
The Golden BOW B Y MAY CROMMELIN
The Man MacDonald
By KATE HELEN WESTON
Author of ' ' Partners ' '
Maids in a Market Garden
By CLO GRAVES (RICHARD DEHAN Author of
"The Dop Doctor.")
The Celibacy of Maurice Kane
By VERA M. CONWAY-GORDON
Emphasizes the contrast between the monastic life and the world.
The situations are strong, and there is no lack of interest.
A FINE HISTORICAL ROMANCE
The Mystic of Prague
By BUCHAN LANDOR
" Stands out from the familiar jugglery of Mediaeval romance."
T.P.'S Weekly.
A Bounty Boy B Y FRANK T. BULLEN
Author of " The Cruise of the Cachalot."
THE DISPATCH PRESS, Granville Works, Cricklewood Lane, N.W.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles
This book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
MM
51986
A 000032374
TVNews
OpenLibrary